I found the stream by accident.

  I heard it before I saw it, a low murmur through the trees, and followed it with the single minded focus of someone who had been sweating in humid forest air for hours and was covered in the dried evidence of a very eventful morning. The stream was narrow and clear, running over smooth stones, cold enough when I waded in to make me hiss through my teeth.

  I stood in the middle of it, maybe knee deep, and washed myself off methodically. The cold water did exactly one thing I wanted it to do and exactly nothing about the other situation. I was hard before I finished washing. Hard getting out. I stood on the bank dripping and looked down at myself and had a brief internal conversation about priorities.

  The ring pulsed once. Slow and warm and completely without shame.

  "Fine," I said. "We're doing research."

  I told myself it was research. I was going to figure out what the ring did and how it worked and that required systematic investigation and if that investigation happened to feel incredible then that was simply the scientific method at work. I was practically obligated.

  I found a spot where thick roots had created a natural seat at the base of a massive tree, soft moss covering everything, the stream audible nearby. Private, comfortable, and most importantly absolutely nobody here to witness what was about to happen. The goblin had wandered off somewhere in the st hour which was the first piece of good luck I'd had all day.

  I sat down, took my cock in hand, and the ring immediately made its presence known. Every stroke was amplified, sensation running outward from the ring through my entire body like the ring was the source and I was just the conductor. I was leaking already, Morning Dew running freely down my shaft from the wide fred head, luminescent and warm, dripping into the moss below where small things were already responding to it with cheerful botanical enthusiasm.

  I came the first time maybe four minutes in and the ring took everything, instant and complete, leaving me clean and still hard and somehow more wound up than before I started. The charge felt heavier. Fuller. Like a tank that had been nearly empty and was now a quarter full and actively requesting more.

  "Okay," I said out loud. "Interesting."

  Still hard. Still leaking. I was nineteen years old and the ring had just stolen my orgasm and converted it to magical fuel and I was somehow more horny than when I started which should not have been physically possible but here we were.

  I started again, slower this time, trying to actually pay attention to what was happening rather than just chasing it. I could feel the charge building inside the ring with each cycle, a pressure gauge climbing steadily. I noticed the healing while I was working — a cut on my palm from a branch earlier, gone. Clean new skin where there had been a stinging line. I pressed my fingers into my shin where the goblin had clubbed me three times.

  Nothing. No tenderness. No bruising.

  "You healed me," I told the ring.

  The ring pulsed once. Warm. Confirming.

  I looked down at myself. Cock fully hard, Morning Dew running in a near constant drip from my wide fred tip, the moss below me already noticeably greener than the surrounding area. A small flower had pushed up through the soil directly beneath my drip point. Then a second one while I watched.

  Growth magic. I filed that away from a clinical distance that was already becoming mostly theoretical.

  It seemed logical to try myself first. I was flexible, years of cross country stretching had given me a range of motion that most nineteen year olds didn't have. I hooked my leg up over a rge root, tilted my hips back, and reached down to line myself up with the genuine optimism of someone who had not yet fully internalized what twelve inches of horse cock combined with genuinely impractical girth meant in applied geometry.

  The length wasn't the problem. That surprised me. With the right angle and my leg hooked high enough I could actually reach, the wide fred tip making contact with my own asshole and the ring lighting up like I'd completed a circuit the moment it did. Warmth exploding outward from that single point of contact in every direction simultaneously. My cock was absolutely dripping Morning Dew right where I needed it, the lubrication situation was frankly excessive, the mechanics should have been entirely straightforward.

  I pressed forward.

  Nothing happened.

  I pressed harder. The ring sent cascading encouragement through every nerve ending I had south of my navel and I was leaking even faster from the stimution and I was getting absolutely nowhere. The fred head was the problem. It was wide. It was very wide. It was wider than my asshole was going to accommodate without a level of preparation I had not undertaken and possibly an act of god.

  I tried anyway. I spent five full minutes with my horse cock pressed against my own asshole, the ring making every moment of contact feel like the most important thing that had ever happened, the Morning Dew making everything slick and warm and still completely insufficient, the geometry simply refusing to cooperate regardless of how much I wanted it to.

  I finally dropped my leg off the root and sat back breathing hard and stared at my cock with genuine personal grievance.

  "You're too fat," I told it. "You did this to yourself and now you won't even fit."

  My cock dripped Morning Dew into the moss. A third flower appeared. The ring offered no sympathy.

  Then I had a different thought.

  I was twelve inches long. I was sitting on a root with my hips tilted forward. I had spent four years doing the kind of stretching that distance runners do before early morning practices. I leaned forward experimentally, curling my spine, bringing my head down toward my p, and my cock was already pointing upward from its own weight and the ring's perpetual enthusiasm and the wide fred tip rose up to meet me.

  I got there.

  My lips closed around the fred head and the ring detonated.

  The pulse that ran through me when my mouth closed around my own cock was something I don't have adequate nguage for. Full body, immediate, starting at both ends simultaneously and meeting somewhere in the middle with a warmth that was completely different from anything that had come before. The Morning Dew hit my tongue immediately — warm, faintly sweet, with something underneath it that had no reference point in any food or drink I'd ever had, something alive and electric that my body recognized even if my brain didn't.

  The moment I swallowed it the healing effect went systemic.

  Every minor ache and scrape and strain of the day simply ceased. Not gradually. Instantly. Like someone had turned off a switch I hadn't known was on. The healing that had been working slowly through topical contact from the Morning Dew dripping on my skin became something fast and thorough and total, spreading from my stomach outward through every system I had. I felt it reach my shin and the st ghost of the goblin's club work disappeared. I felt it reach my shoulders where I'd been carrying tension since I woke up face down in dirt and that disappeared too.

  I filed that away. Eating it works better. Much better.

  I licked the fred head thoroughly, cleaning off everything that had accumuted, and swallowed it and felt the systemic warmth deepen. The ring rewarded every pass of my tongue with pulses that ran down my shaft and settled at the ring's position in waves. I was producing Morning Dew faster now, the stimution accelerating things considerably, a near constant flow that gave me plenty to work with every time I leaned forward.

  I stayed there longer than research strictly required.

  When I finally sat back up my spine popped in two pces and my neck had opinions but the ring was noticeably heavier with charge and my whole body felt like I'd slept twelve hours and woken up completely restored. I sat breathing for a moment and appreciated the systemic warmth still moving through me like slow fire.

  Then I looked at my hand.

  I reached down and slicked my fingers thoroughly in what I was producing in genuinely generous quantity, reached back, and pressed one finger against my asshole slowly. The ring rewarded me immediately, a warm pulse spreading outward from that point, and I pushed in to the first knuckle and had to breathe carefully through my nose. I worked it slowly, let myself adjust, and pushed further.

  I added a second finger and pressed my forehead against my knee and made a sound into the empty forest.

  I worked them together, the ring amplifying everything it was receiving and sending it back doubled, and edged my cock with my other hand at the same time. The ring drank down each orgasm as it arrived and immediately demanded another, the charge building in cycling waves. I leaned forward between cycles and got my mouth back around my tip and licked off the accumuted Morning Dew in long slow passes and swallowed it and felt the systemic warmth yer on top of itself, my body climbing toward something that felt less like flesh and more like a sustained current.

  I added a third finger when two stopped being enough and the stretch of my own fingers in my ass with the ring involved took approximately thirty seconds of my coherent thought and repced it with pure signal. I stayed there until I adjusted and then worked steadily, leaning forward periodically to clean my tip with my tongue, swallowing Morning Dew and feeling it work through me each time, the ring cycling charge higher with every orgasm it absorbed.

  The rabbit-adjacent creature with too many ears appeared at some point and sat at a respectful distance watching me with an expression of total devoted attention.

  I noticed it during a moment of retive crity between cycles, my mouth currently occupied.

  "No," I said, from around my own cock.

  It continued sitting there.

  Eventually I reached for the goblin club.

  I looked at the narrow end. Roughly an inch and a half where it tapered. I had three fingers in my ass and the ring was making suggestions that could not be characterized as subtle and the Morning Dew was running in a near continuous stream down my cock.

  I slicked the narrow end methodically and generously, coating it with what I was producing in continuous supply, pressed it against my ass, and felt it seat on the first try. The preparation had done exactly what it was supposed to do. I worked it in slowly. An inch. Two. The ring sent a pulse up my spine that arrived at the back of my skull like a bell struck hard and I bit down on the sound that came out of me for no reason since there was absolutely nobody here except a devoted rabbit thing that I was not acknowledging.

  Three inches. Four. One hand on the club working it steadily, the other hand on my cock, and I leaned forward and got my mouth back around my tip because at this point I had thoroughly abandoned any pretense of research and the Morning Dew was running in a near continuous generous stream and I was going to use every avaible resource simultaneously.

  I tongued the wide fred head and worked the club in my ass and stroked my shaft and the ring ran all three inputs together into a single overwhelming signal that made the forest and the devoted rabbit audience and the entire situation recede to background information. I edged myself through cycle after cycle, the ring drinking each orgasm and demanding the next, the Morning Dew production accelerating with each cycle, more to lick off each time I leaned forward, the systemic healing yering deeper with each swallow until I felt genuinely extraordinary, every part of me running at a frequency considerably above anything I'd experienced before.

  The moss around me had become extravagant. Multiple flowers in full bloom. Small mushrooms in a rough circle around my root. The rabbit-adjacent creature had been joined by two friends. A small bird had nded on the root above my head and appeared to have no pns to leave.

  I finally stopped because my legs were shaking and the ring was so dark and heavy with charge that I could feel heat radiating off it against my skin, a physical warmth that had nothing to do with the humid forest air.

  I sat back against the root completely limp and looked up at the green-gold light coming through the canopy and breathed.

  I leaned forward one final time and cleaned the st of the Morning Dew off my tip with slow thorough passes of my tongue and swallowed it and felt the st yer of systemic warmth settle through me like the final piece of something clicking completely into pce.

  My whole body felt like a live wire wrapped in warm water.

  The ring was very, very full.

  I looked at the three animals watching me with devoted patience. I looked at the bird on the root. I looked at the flowers and mushrooms that hadn't existed an hour ago. I looked at the glowing thread still dripping from my tip and watched a drop fall into the moss and watched something small and green push up through the soil in response.

  "Growth magic," I said out loud, to the flowers, to the animals, to whatever was listening. "Healing. Better healing if you eat it." I paused, looking at the club resting in the moss next to me. "And some extremely personal discoveries."

  I was nineteen years old in a fantasy world with a magical horse cock ring and a goblin club and an audience of devoted woodnd creatures and more questions than answers and a body that felt like it could run forever.

  I carefully extracted the club, stood up on legs that were steadier than they deserved to be, and decided to go find something to eat that wasn't Morning Dew.

  The three animals and the bird followed me.

  I didn't encourage this.