Deep, deep beneath the sun-scorched skin of Dalmatia, in a place where time was measured not in seconds but in the slow, grinding dance of tectonic plates, something stirred.
It was not a sudden awakening. It was a gradual seepage of consciousness, like sap rising in a dormant tree. For centuries, Juraj had slept, his essence woven into the dark, fertile humus, tangled amidst the roots of ancient oaks, and dissolved in the cold, secret waters that flowed through limestone caves. His dreams were the dreams of the land itself: vast, slow, and cyclical. He dreamed of glaciers retreating, of seas rising and falling, of empires of oak and beech that marched across the hills only to be felled by the axes of men who scurried on the surface like ants.
He was one of the Stari Bogovi, the Old Gods. Juraj. God of the quickening sap, the tender green shoot that cracks the winter-hardened earth. God of the frantic, beautiful mating of beasts in the spring forest, of the passionate, life-giving rains that soaked the soil, of the relentless, joyful force of rebirth that defied all decay. His domain was the fierce, tender pulse of life itself.
His slumber was a necessary thing. The world above had changed. The great percussive hymns to Perun, the Thunderer, had been replaced by the thin, constant whine of machines. The offerings of wine, milk, and honey at the sacred springs had ceased, replaced by the casual toss of a plastic bottle. The prayers, once sung in a language as old as the hills, were now silent, or worse, directed at newer, more distant gods. The world had grown loud in its artificiality and quiet in its reverence. So, Juraj and his kind had withdrawn, retreating into the deep, silent bones of the earth to sleep, their power latent, their presence fading into myth.
But the earth never truly forgets its masters.
The pull began as a faint, persistent thrum. A vibration that was entirely different from the jarring, mechanical tremors of the world above—the dynamite blasts for new roads, the pile drivers for concrete foundations. This was a gentle, rhythmic pulse. It was the sound of care.
It was the press of bare feet on soil, not in haste, but in reverence. It was the whisper of a hand brushing against a lavender stalk, not to exploit, but to cherish. It was the soft, wordless song of a spirit that was deeply, intrinsically tied to the land. It was a kind of energy he had not felt in a long, long age. Not a demand, like the desperate prayers of old, nor a defiance, like the screech of a bulldozer. It was an invitation. A gentle, unwitting siren's call woven from humility and love.
It tugged at him, this thread of gentle energy, pulling him up from the depths of his dreams. He resisted at first, the inertia of centuries a heavy blanket. But the pull was constant, a beacon in the silent dark. Curiosity, a sensation he had not felt in an eon, began to prickle through his dormant consciousness.
Who? the core of him asked, the thought a rumble like shifting stone. Who tends the garden with such hands?
He began to move. Not with the form he had once worn in the age of belief—that would come later—but as a concentration of essence, a gathering of intention. He was a current of warmth flowing upward through fissures in the rock, a surge of vitality rising with the groundwater. He was the smell of wet earth after a long drought, the electric promise in the air before a spring storm.
He followed the thread, this golden filament of kindness, as it led him through the labyrinth of stone and root. It grew stronger with every passing moment, this connection to the source. He could feel the specific patch of land from which it emanated—a small, sloping field on the edge of an island the humans now called Korčula. The soil there was happy. It felt… loved.
And then, he broke the surface.
It was not a violent eruption, but a slow seepage from the soil itself, a coalescing of power and form in the dappled shade of the pine woods that bordered the field. The world assaulted his senses, not with the familiar cacophony of the ancient wild, but with a strange new symphony. The hum of wires on wooden poles. The distant, guttural cough of a boat engine. The scent of burned petrol hanging in the air. It was jarring, alien.
But then, his senses focused, drawn like a compass needle to the true north of that gentle, pulling energy.
And he saw her.
The sun was high, painting the world in strokes of brilliant gold and green. And in the center of the lavender field, bent over her work, was a mortal woman.
Juraj, now fully manifest in a form that was both his own and a reflection of the land's ideal—tall, broad-shouldered, with hair as dark as the richest soil and eyes the deep, fertile brown of plowed earth—stood utterly still. The alien noises of the modern world faded into a meaningless buzz. All that existed was this sun-drenched field and the woman within it.
He looked her up and down, his gaze an ancient, unhurried tide washing over the shore of her being. And with each detail he absorbed, a long-dormant pleasure, deep and primal, began to uncoil within him.
She was wearing a simple, faded blue dress of a light cotton, sleeveless, its hem brushing against the tops of her boots. It was practical, but the way it draped over her form as she moved, the way the fabric hinted at the curve of her spine and the gentle swell of her hips, was a poetry more potent than any hymn ever sung in his name.
Her hair was a cascade of long, curly light brown, the color of honeyed oak wood, escaping from under a simple straw hat. Strands of it stuck to her damp temples and neck, and he had the sudden, startling urge to feel the texture of it, to see if it was as soft as the silk of milkweed or as wild as untamed ivy.
Her hands, as she worked, were a fascination. They were stained with earth, the nails short and practical. There was a smudge of dark soil on her wrist. They were not the idle, delicate hands of courtly maidens from legends past. These were hands that did. They were strong, capable, and yet, as she cradled a bundle of lavender stalks, impossibly gentle. He watched the play of tendons in her forearm, the flex of her fingers, and he saw in them the same careful, creating force that shaped a bird's nest or a spider's web. They were hands of life.
Then, she straightened up, pressing a fist into the small of her back to ease some ache, and she pushed the straw hat back from her face.
Juraj's breath caught in a throat that had not needed air for centuries.
Her face was… a revelation. The sun had kissed her skin to a warm gold, and a light dusting of freckles lay across the bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks. Her lips were full, naturally rosy and slightly parted as she caught her breath. But it was her eyes that held him, that pinned him to the spot with the force of a divine decree.
They were the color of the Adriatic Sea where it was shallowest, over white sand—an impossible, piercing blue, clear and deep and fringed with dark lashes. In them, he saw no guile, no calculation, only a quiet contentment, a deep and abiding peace with her place in this sun-drenched corner of the world. They were the eyes of someone who listened to the land, and in that moment, he felt that the land listened back to her.
A powerful, almost overwhelming wave of sensation crashed over him. It was more than mere attraction. It was a profound, resonating recognition. This mortal woman, with her soil-stained hands and her sea-blue eyes, was the living, breathing embodiment of everything he was, everything he represented. The tender care of the spring shoot, the fertile potential of the blossoming field, the quiet, passionate persistence of life. She was his domain, made flesh.
He looked her up and down again, this time with a god's possessive, appreciative pleasure. He took in the slender strength of her ankles, the curve of her calf, the honest shape of her. She was not a statue carved to an impossible ideal; she was real, vibrant, and achingly beautiful in her complete unawareness of his gaze. She was the most perfect thing he had seen since the first orchid bloomed in a primordial forest.
A low, soft sound, almost a purr, rumbled in his chest. It was the sound of the earth appreciating a well-tended garden. It was the sound of a dormant god coming vibrantly, fiercely alive.
He watched her for a long time, a sentinel in the shadows of the pines. He watched the way she moved through her rows, a dancer in a ritual she herself had created. He saw the way she sometimes paused to watch a bee, or to look out at the sea, a small, private smile touching those full lips. Each smile was a drop of warm rain on his parched spirit.
He saw the moment she felt him.
It was subtle. A slight hesitation in her movement. A faint frown between her brows. She straightened, her body tensing, her senses reaching out, trying to identify the source of the disturbance. He had been too eager, too present. His power, his sheer vitality, had leaked out and brushed against her awareness, making the air shimmer, making the colors intensify. He saw her confusion, her slight fear, and he pulled his energy back, reining it in, becoming a quieter shadow.
He saw her rationalize it, brush it off as the heat. A smile touched his own lips then. It was a fascinating, endearing human trait, this need to explain away the miraculous, to fit the unknown into the comfortable boxes of the known.
He remained there, watching, as she finished her work, as she hefted the heavy basket onto her hip and walked back towards the stone cottage. He watched the way she walked, with a grounded grace, her connection to the earth visible in every step. His eyes followed her until she disappeared inside, the wooden door closing with a soft, final thud.
Silence returned to the field, but it was a different silence now. It was filled with his presence, with the echo of her, with the thrum of a new and terrifying possibility.
Juraj, God of Spring, Fertility, Passion, and Rebirth, stood at the edge of the woods, his dark eyes fixed on the cottage. The centuries of sleep fell away from him like a discarded husk. The languor was gone, replaced by a sharp, sweet, and agonizingly human ache.
He had come to the surface drawn by a gentle, kind energy. He had found a woman who made the very concept of slumber seem like a waste of eternity. The pull was no longer a faint thrum; it was a taut, golden chain around his core, and it was anchored to her.
He had slept through the rise and fall of empires. He had slept through the birth of new religions and the death of old ones. But now, looking at that simple stone cottage, Juraj knew, with the certainty of a force of nature, that his long sleep was over. A new season was beginning.
And he would have her.