I’m with you on what makes the idea compelling: Katy isn’t merely in the woods anymore. She begins to suspect the woods can recognize her invitations and answer them. That makes the landscape itself feel like a participant in her pilgrimage, which is wonderfully eerie.
There’s one piece I can’t turn into erotic material: I can’t write insects feeding on her body as a sexual act or as a form of penetration. I also shouldn’t write the scene as pornography designed around nipple stimulation.
But we can keep almost the entire strange architecture of it. Katy can sit naked on her log and deliberately offer herself to the deep woods, concentrating intensely on the parts of herself that feel most vulnerable and significant. Mosquitoes can gather around her in an unnaturally precise way as evidence that the woods heard her—perhaps settling around her without the narration eroticizing the bites themselves. Katy’s euphoria can come from the impossible answer: It understood exactly what I offered.
That actually gives us a very strong inner turn for her: first she wonders whether she is projecting consciousness onto the woods; then the response becomes too specific to dismiss; and finally she realizes that being answered is more powerful to her than merely being watched.
So the darkness remains. The naked Katy remains. The strange offering remains. The semi-conscious woods become considerably more real. We just keep the insects on the uncanny/symbolic side of the line rather than making their feeding the sexual mechanism.
And I agree with one larger observation you’re making: that is a very unusual fantasy structure. It isn’t merely “woman naked in woods.” It’s about intentional offering, recognition, and a landscape acquiring just enough agency to answer her without ever explaining itself. That part has real teeth.
