The Grandelf pushed the rogue strand of her bangs back behind her ear reflexively after a bump in the road jostled it out of place. Her hair was neither straight nor curly and fell down to her jaw, which meant frequently pushing locks away from her face. Being a Grandelf, in fact coming into the world as one, she was by no means short. In fact she stood near exactly the breed's average of 183 centimeters. She often wondered to herself what it must be like for those Elf pokegirls of diminutive stature growing so substantially in an instant. There must be some period of adjustment, mustn't there?
She was graceful as so many pokegirls of her evolutionary line were. In her particular case it manifested as a stoic and sturdy sort of grace, which along with her willowy frame evoked the image of a tree standing true season after season, year after year.
A lone tree, cut off from the forest, surrounded by fields of grass.
She was studiously working through a list of fledgling magical adepts she was responsible for evaluating out in this rural region of the Sapfir Liha, or Sapphire League in English. That was the role she had been tasked with by the Sapfirova Konservatoriya Chaklunstva, the league's national school of magic. One she was vastly overqualified for and had been thrust upon her in order to get her, and her waning influence, away from the halls of magical knowledge in Kyiv. One the administration specifically created abusing as many loopholes as they could to do so, in fact.
She had hated working under every administration after the very first one formed during the school's founding. That team was led by Izaak Tkachenko-Vrach, her first and only master. He had, leading up to his retirement, used the last of his political capital to legally bind the school into granting her a tenured position. At the same time, a portion of his accumulated wealth had been dedicated to establishing a very generous endowment to keep a legal firm under retainer to protect her position. While the bureaucrats were able to convince the first firm to drop her, and multiple after, so far she’d still been able to find someone competent to take the money and hold the institution to account. It was due to this that every administration since the first also had hated working with her, Elena Hrandelf-Vrach.
Elena did the work out of love for the decades she spent building the school alongside her master and to ensure as much of his legacy remained as possible. She also appreciated some of the connections it maintained and privileges it garnered. Particularly full access to the library. The travel was tedious though.
Not that her current ride in this rugged oversized rickshaw was for her work. Her home base was in a tiny, ancient village named Slov'Yanka by virtue of it being located in the relative center of the region she was responsible for. The sheriff, a middle aged man by the name of Denys Kohut, could be described as imaginative if one were inclined to be polite. Whenever he was out investigating something and failed to reach a reasonably down to earth solution his mind jumped into the vast realms of the supernatural and unearthly. So the sheriff was astride his alpha, a Rapitaur by the name of Tanya, while Elena rode in the cart pulled by his Clydesdame Rahela. Like so many times before the mystery was probably something entirely mundane but it didn't hurt to keep oneself on good terms with the city's authorities as a manumitted pokegirl with little else in the way of social support. Particularly from the human elements.
A cloud passed overhead and the air temperature dropped. Not unusual. But then the gloom and chill both kept growing in intensity which finally disrupted Elena's focus enough to take her attention away from her work. She gasped and dropped her notebook to the floor in front of her seat.
The sun had not gone behind a cloud. It was still shining up in the sky, but it looked dim and distant. The whole path through the sparse woodlands was blanketed by twilight and the trees loomed overhead, imposing and surreally tall. Color had been drained from everything just as much as warmth and light, not gone, but woefully diminished.
Sheriff Kohut's face was a half forced, smug grin, but the apprehension saturating the environment was dampening the fun of seeing Elena’s reaction after he was met with her usual polite skepticism. "Here's where it starts. Deeper in it gets worse. You think you see things, hear things. We turned back after that, but we did triangulate to confirm the Vasylk homestead is at the center of it." His grin became relaxed enough for a little more of the smugness to come through. "I told you it was something crazy. I think it was those martian pokegirls they say Sukebe made, the ones that fly around in an evolved StarlightXpress breed. This could be an after effect of their gravitation based flight powers and global psychic probing." The two centaur girls belonging to the sheriff both shook their heads sadly. Sheriff Denys Kohut was a good man and effective community leader, but his outlandish theories were notorious throughout the entire community.
Elena was already far too used to only listening for keywords when working with the sheriff and they both were in mutual agreement that her speciality was magic, not whatever extra-terrestrial pokegirls may exist in the reaches of space outside of Earth's influence. "There is indeed something curious happening here, Sheriff Denys, sir. Let me take some measurements here, then I'm going to see what I can find further in after preparing some rituals of warding. I can include you, Tanya, and Rahela if you'd like to get to the core of this…" Elena trailed off again as she cast her gaze about the sorrowful dreamscape.
"Alien visitation." Denys suggested.
"Anomaly." The Grandelf dropped from the cart and wandered on bare feet a ways towards the trees. They were distressed. More than the low light and temperature would cause. Some force was bending and twisting them like they were caught in a wind storm, but the air was still. The grasses and mosses on the ground were unhappy too for similar reasons. She reached for a seed bag she kept in a pouch on her waist and pulled out a handful of small dark seeds attached to fuzzy white tufts. She prepared a spell to generate a strong scattering updraft, imprinted her will on the seeds in her palm, and tossed them into the air to be swept away by her conjured whorl of wind. The Sensor Seeds would give her more points of perspective to work from. She then made use of a battery of detection spells, pausing to repeat the process with the seeds two more times. She blinked as she was struck by a sudden sense of deja vu before clearing her head.
She had enough to present her initial conclusion. “Well, Sheriff Denys, sir,” she returned to the sheriff and his two companions to ready the promised wards, “so far as I can determine this is the result of no form of magic I’ve ever encountered.”
Tanya and Rahela looked worried while their master more elated. “I told you. I told all three of you. It’s not magic, because it’s aliens.”
“It could still be psionic or some other method of illusionary influence. That’s most of what I’m warding us against. Also possession, there are some ghost types that could do something like this.” With the best the Grandelf could think of in place, the sheriff climbed back onto the back of his alpha while Elena sat in the rickshaw once again.
As she rode she focused on the notes she jotted down to record the magical readings. It was frustrating. So much of what she detected could have been mistaken for normal by someone more novice than she was, but to someone of her knowledge and experience it was all just slightly wrong. The sides of her head were becoming sore, a sign to her that her ears were fidgeting compulsively. It was a tell that was exhausting to suppress, so much so that way back when she was young she would uproot herself and break away from whatever court she had been living among once it had been widely discovered. She lived that lonely, transient life for decades after the war ended. Up until the day she met her master.
More sad memories. Were they natural, or was it this gloom that was enveloping everything?
She honestly did not know if any of her protective magic was helping or not and while concerning, she also felt the most thrilled she had in decades. How long had it been since she had a true mystery to delve into? There was always her magical research but new ideas often came from new experiences.
She hadn’t had anything new in her life for a great, long while.
As the apparitions began manifesting her enthusiasm did dampen some. The hallucinations weren't terribly distressing. The figures she saw were all at the furthest edges of her peripheral vision and were never there when she turned her eyes towards them. The only things she could perceive was a humanoid silhouette and the sensation of a set of eyes focused on her. The voices were only that, human sounding voices. The Grandelf was fluent in every language spoken in the Sapphire League and a passing study in many more for the sake of magical research, yet there was no meaning she could decipher in the sounds.
It was under a nearly dusk blue sky that they finally came upon the Vasylk homestead. The Vasylks were a rather antisocial clan that was among the very first peoples to settle this part of the league. They sold their properties and moved deeper into the wilderness multiple times as the settlement of Slov'Yanka was reclaimed and matured into the modest town of the present day. Many within the village limits often speculated how long it would be until tragedy struck the isolated homesteaders. Elena saw before her that the time had finally arrived.
Everything was bent like it was leaning at dramatic angles and stressed to the beginning of fractures. Buildings further in were partially collapsed from small sinkholes opening beneath them. Dust and mist swirled together suspended in the air and fell as silt filled droplets when disturbed.
“As little these folks contribute to the community, I’ve still gotta look for survivors. Unless you’ve got more magic stuff to do me and the girls would appreciate your help.”
Something about the destruction struck her as oddly familiar, but she could not put her finger on why so she answered the sheriff while doing her best to hide her confused apprehension. “Of course, sir. I’d be glad to help.”
They swept loosely together, keeping in earshot of each other’s voices and constantly calling out for potential survivors to know they were there. Elena happened to look through a series of holes through exterior and interior walls and found herself captivated. It was all a great curve, spiralling arms of some larger pattern. A pattern she’d seen before, she knew it but she could not say when or where.
“Hold up. I want to check further west.” The Grandelf called out. Rahela called out an affirmation and began moving her way to keep everything in reaction distance. Elena made her way around to the other side of the building. The dust and mist were all disturbed by the same projected curve from the destruction of the house. Scanning about revealed more of these curved invisible arms, all converging somewhere nearby. She moved in that direction but reached an empty yard with clear air. She couldn’t find the hidden details anymore no matter where she looked.
That’s when she recalled the sense of deja vu from earlier. Something odd she noticed when using her sensor seeds earlier that day. She remembered thinking she’d seen a pattern leading somewhere in there too. However she dismissed it before the idea was even really fully formed. She got the sense that she had been seeing these sorts of patterns for most of the day but subconsciously chose to ignore them.
She dwelt on that idea. What was it she had noticed before? What did she see? What did she feel? She focused on when she had been casting her surveying magic at the edge of this phenomenon, on her memories. Two things had stood out to her besides the vague perception of a converging spiral. Her spread Sensor Seeds all burned out prematurely. She had assumed it was territorial feral plant types. But in the same instant each seed was destroyed she felt a nostalgic sort of pain that she knew well but hadn’t felt in two hundred years.
The agonizing loneliness when her bond with Izaak finally died. How funny, a melancholic sort of funny, that somehow it never completely went away until then. He had arranged for her de-facto manumission before either of them had realized it was there. Over the decades it had become apparent that, unlike the rest of his harem, she wasn’t going to grow old and die with him. He said it would be for the best. Give her a chance to move on with less grief.
She could feel that pain again. It was making her feel so lonely now. The weight of the sensation felt like it was physically pressing down on her. Her head swam. She struggled to breath. She worried that she may pass out.
She was so cold.
It was so dark.
She felt so lonely.
Why was she even trying?
Why did she continue to be? Wouldn’t it be simpler to just...
Someone caught her, and held her in his arms. She knew they were a man’s arms; she’d been held by many pokegirls and not a small number of humans, both men and women. It was the price of maintaining freedom. But she could tell, she was in a man’s arms. The certain familiarities told her so.
It was all such a comfortable dreamlike feeling. She could still perceive the bleakness around them but the embrace was shielding her and it was no longer overwhelming. The only person she could guess was, “Izaak?”
She felt the arms pull away. Her companion was retreating.
“Sorry. No. Izaak. I am not.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry, it just reminded me, he was my first tamer, you see. He’s been dead for a long time but I still sometimes...” The arms returned around her very gingerly. She pushed herself further into the embrace and sighed contentedly before she continued. She felt an expectation for her to continue.
“It was only a few decades after the war ended. I was tutoring an Elfqueen and her subjects who were cooperating with the humans nearby. I found one laughably simple warding charm on a path and, assuming it had been made by one of the young Elves pining over a man who was hunting the woods, took it back to shame whichever of my students had crafted the ugly thing. None of them were responsible though.
“I hadn’t considered that humans would be capable of magic before that, but no-one within the court was responsible so eventually I contacted the village and discovered it was the work of a young man there. Suddenly what I thought was the shoddy work of a student was the ingenious breakthrough of someone completely uninitiated. I found myself wanting to know this man and see what he could become, so I gave myself to him. I was so impressed with his innate understanding of magic I was shocked by how hopeless he was otherwise.” She found herself openly sharing these warm memories. “I taught him what I knew and we built the foundation of magical education for the entire league. Together.”
She suddenly could feel the cold coming back into her. There was a reason she tried not to think about those long gone times. Because no matter how happy they were, what immediately followed robbed her of all warmth.
“Then, after I’d been with him for thirty years his alpha turned the rest of the harem against me, and combined they convinced him to get rid of me. Their argument claimed it was for my best interest. That it would give me the chance to move on since I was obviously going to outlive them all. Neither he nor I had realized yet that we had the beginnings of a delta bond. His alpha was a psychic. She told me on her death bed that she knew, and that’s why she worked to split us up. I was the only one she ever told and she lived a few months longer than he did.” She sighed and the sigh became a gloomy chuckle at her own absurdity. “I wanted to kill her but she passed before I could decide how she deserved to die.” She rolled over to see her companion for the first time but saw nothing. She couldn’t even tell if she had really moved. Since she had needed to pull away from him she couldn’t feel his embrace and without that she realized she couldn’t feel anything. Not even the tightening of her insides or the trembling energy from the fear that started to scream inside her mind..
“I can’t move. I tried to roll over but I can’t- I can’t feel my-”
There was a lurching sensation, as if the entire universe the two of them occupied had been shaken from its core. She could see now that they were lying together on… well it felt like a bed, supportive and soft. It looked to her like a cloud, or a spill of something white on top of a pitch black body of water. A suggestion of a form appeared. To her he looked like someone made of light, a human form that wavered about the edges and imperceptibly slowly shifted in shape around three fixed points set in where the face would be. The light was dim, cold, and grey, a candle’s flame on a lightless winter night. Yet because there was no other light, or warmth, or color he also seemed brighter, warmer, and more vibrant than any halcyon summer day she could recall.
She reached out to try to touch him but her arm could not stretch far enough. Holding her hand out in front of her, she got the impression that he was very distant from her. Further than the sun, further than the stars. He took her fingers in his hand and examined them gently. She took his hand in her free one and playfully tussled with him until all four of their hands were interlocked with the others. “What- Who are you?” She asked him.
“I do not know. No, I know but I can not remember. Recall. I could not remember how to speak. I could not remember what it meant to see. I could not remember the feeling of touch.” She felt a gentle but firm squeeze on her hands.
“You forgot? How did you forget?”
“I was alone. I was here by myself, with nothing. I don't know how long, but it was long enough that, with no one to talk to, no one to say my name… it all faded away." Two words echoed in the void around them, ‘alone’ and ‘nothing’, until it grew into something like a storm. A pressure grew in the air and things seemed to be shaking violently. There was a palpable sense of dread and despair from the two words. Alone. Nothing.
She knew she had to calm him down, to bring him back to here and her. So she pulled his face towards hers and kissed him, where his mouth should be. She could feel his lips under hers, so she must have hit her mark. He felt, smelled, tasted good. When the world around them calmed she broke away and guided his head to rest against her shoulder. Quietly but with firm conviction she told him, “You’re not alone. You’re with me.”
“You can not stay.”
She picked up his hands again and tugged him towards her. “Maybe you can come with me?” He didn’t answer, but she could read from his expression that he was interested. It didn’t matter that he had no face to make an expression. The feeling was just apparent as if it was channeled through the air between them. “You probably don’t remember your name either.”
“I remember one name. I remember it wasn’t the one I was given, I made it for myself. The rest are gone but somewhere I am known by this name.”
Rahela was calling out to her and she couldn’t make out his voice overtop of the shouting. She wasn’t sure she heard the name correctly. She tried to tune Rahela out but no matter how much focus she mustered her companion sounded and felt further and further away.
Suddenly she was fighting to maintain herself in an upright position. It was as if suddenly she had been thrown into the driver’s seat of her own body, she hadn’t even gotten fully situated behind the wheel when instant reaction was required to prevent possible disaster. She acted instinctively and quickly her situation was stable but strange.
She was aware of countless sensations that had been missing from when she was in that empty space with the strange being. What was most strange was that she realized she was holding someone in her arms. A mostly grown boy, or a young man. Human lives had become ephemeral to her and the phases of them blurred together. They always looked young until suddenly they didn’t anymore, and it was never the same age from one to the next.
“Elena, are you alright you- You found someone! Denys! Elena found someone!”
The sheriff and Tanya sprinted over with such reckless haste that the sheriff was left unable to steady himself to speak using full sentences. “Who? A kid. Doesn’t. Doesn’t look like…” He took and held in one deep breath. “He doesn’t look like any Vasylk kid. Where did you find him?”
Elena had been in a daze as her mind tried to re-establish itself within her body. Her own weight felt as alien to her as that of the male in her arms. “Kid?” No, she’d been in the company of a man, a man whose company she was enjoying, she thought. But there was someone much, much younger than her here now. She knew, though, in unquestioning certainty that this was him. That confidence was frightening to her because there was no logical basis for it. She could not remember finding this person. How was she going to answer the sheriff’s question? “No, I… I found… I wasn’t here.” She was overcome by vertigo and breathlessness again. Or she had just realized that she was suffering from it still.
“Oh Jesus Christ Lord of Mercy, Tanya, pick her up and get the emergency aluminum. Rahela, get that boy and head for the gate. We need to get out of here before the Martians scramble our brains too!”
(-[|]-) End 1.1 (-[|]-)
Elena finally looked down from staring up at the stars and passing shadows of tree limbs. If none of it made any sense right now anyway…
She may as well assume her own memories were correct. It did explain her fellow passenger on the path back towards her home. He was leaning against her, still unconscious but Elena thought, looking at his face, that it was at least a more peaceful, restorative state of unconsciousness rather than one that was pained and exhausted. Like when she first felt him in her arms.
She felt her hand rising of its own accord to play with the hair on top of his head as she looked down on him. She jerked it back into place on her lap. His hair swirled around his scalp in the exact same spiral pattern that had fascinated her at least twice earlier that day. She felt giddy flutters in her gut and a sense of triumph. It was as if she’d solved a challenging puzzle that had been left unsolved for frustratingly long. And the same sort of comfort and familiarity radiated from the youth as the inhuman but very human being.
“Here, put one on yourself and then this one on the kid.” Denys handed her two pieces of aluminum foil sheets formed into approximately conical hats. She didn’t have the energy for the stupid argument that would come from resisting the sheriff’s ‘aid’. So she pressed the foil hat down around her already thoroughly disheveled jaw length blonde hair and then fit it’s twin down on the boy’s scalp. Maybe now she would stop trying to play with his hair.
Was he a boy or young man? She still could not make up her mind. It didn’t help that she had lived such a long life that she had talked with men on their deathbeds who she felt were still young. To her, they were. And this person she found herself propping up was certainly not a fully mature adult, but someone somewhere along the decade or more of becoming one. An awkward still frame in the growth into one’s potential.
“Going to call Klavdiya and have her fly the Doc over, have her check you and especially that kid over.”
“Denys, with all due respect, sir, I’m fine. It was just some vertigo because of the way that place seemed distorted.”
“Elena, the way I see it you’re showing signs of psychic trauma-”
“Denys, I wasn’t attacked by a psychic.”
“You said yourself that effect could have been from a psychic type technique and Rahela said she saw something happening with the light bending around you when you stumbled on that boy. Only one time Rahela seen something like that and it was a psychic technique, a real powerful one.”
“Denys I wasn’t probed by any Martians!”
“Elena I ain’t talking about Martians. Yes, I got out the hats but other than those and praying to the Lord I don’t know what I can do with two apparent victims of psychic attack besides get them checked out by a medic. So that is what I am doing and I will offer the Lord his prayers when next I get the chance.”
Elena wanted to continue fighting but she couldn't fault Denys' logic, so she rode in silence until she started to recognize her trees. Trees she knew from when she planted them after moving out here. Trees she had watched grow every spring and survive every winter. That meant she was close enough to connect with her sensory plants she kept constantly growing about her home. She saw that she had a guest waiting outside of her front door.
Of course she would drop in unannounced after such a difficult and strange day. It’s what her kind did, after all.
“Denys, sir. Tanya, Rahela. A friend of mine showed up at my home and is waiting. She is around two hundred fifteen centimeters, light skinned, and has long black hair. She’s a Megami.” The sheriff nodded, then looked to both of his girls in turn who both confirmed they had heard to expect a pokegirl by that description.
The boy, as Elena was leaning towards identifying him due to his continued helpless, unconscious state, did not wake before they arrived at Elena's home. It was a small two story home made of stone walls and timber roof. It had been built on land that was too full of hills, rocks, and trees to have been converted into farmland. After the first decade spent putting in a greenhouse and as many shrubbery, vegetable, herb, or flower plots as pleased her it was finally her cozy little bastion of nature. Rahela dropped the handles to the rickshaw and then changed to her fully human shape to come around and pick up the unconscious boy. Elena left him in the Clydesdame’s care to see to her unexpected friend.
Her description to the sheriff and his girls had been accurate but also lacking. The Megami was indeed pale skinned, with black hair, standing around two hundred fifteen centimeters. Her hair fell back and to the sides, exposing her round face possessed of striking indo-iranian features. A tall nose with a narrow bridge, slightly darker and full lips, elegantly angled and full eyebrows, and heavily lidded almond shaped eyes. The color of her eyes usually couldn't even be seen from behind the veil of her incredibly full lashes. Elena knew, however, that they were arguably the Megami's most captivating feature. Arguably, because they did have to compete with her breasts. Large by most conventional senses, only the most extremely endowed breeds were her betters in such a regard. It came from her earlier life as a Mooncalf, and a Milktit before that. Tonight they were contained, as usual, by a brightly colored saree with a strained blouse underneath. The rest of her was less remarkable, though her overall figure was moderately on the full and curvy half of the spectrum. She moved with sudden energy and fluid grace, unimpeded by her ample assets, to seize her Grandelf friend in a tight embrace.
"Nell!" She cheered out her pet name for Elena while joyfully dancing in place and crushing Elena’s face against her breasts. She musically made a few more happy noises before Elena mostly broke free.
"Candi, it's good to see you," 'Nell' replied quietly. At a greater volume she introduced the Megami to the others. "Sheriff Kohut, Tanya, Rahela, this is my friend Chandrakanta Mehami-Paza."
Chandrakanta dipped gracefully in greeting. “A pleasure to meet you, good Sheriff, and to your women. A pleasure to meet you, Tanya, Rahela.'' The Megami’s attention shifted to the figure in Rahela’s arms. “Tell me, does that boy need medical attention?”
Denys looked back at the boy Rahela was carrying. “Well, my best guess is that him and Elena got hit with some kind of psychic attack. Would you happen to be qualified to evaluate and treat such a thing? To be honest I’m not sure if the doc can.”
“Well, that would depend, sir. I am not licensed to practice medicine within the Sapphire League but I did serve as a healer for seventy years during some mission work.”
“Seventy-” The sheriff was momentarily stunned until he looked to the Grandelf standing beside the Megami. “Oh, so you are a longtime friend of Elena’s?”
“Yes good sheriff, it has been quite a long time now.” Chandrakanta’s smile made her eyes vanish even more than usual. “Will you release the boy into my care?”
Denys scratched the back of his head and then let out a deep sigh. “Yeah, yeah I suppose I can. I trust Elena and I get the sense I can trust you too. You take care of those two and I’ll make some calls. Klavdiya will be glad I don’t have to send her to fetch the doc. Marta’s gotten so crazy from the pregnancy last time she was left alone to watch the house she was sitting by herself in the dark with her rifle all night. Kids were so worked up they couldn’t sleep a wink.” Klavdiya was Denys’ Chocoboob while Marta was his Officer Jenny, who, as a privilege of her breed and position as a deputy could requisition from the regional armory. Her rifle was very large and intimidating.
Elena led Rahela and Chandrakanta inside and directed the Clydesdame to deposit the boy on the couch. Rahela then quickly took her leave to stand outside with her master, who was composing a message on his work device.
“You were attacked by a psychic, Nell?”
“No, I wasn’t. At least, I don’t think so.”
“You do not think so? I would have thought you had sparred with Star enough to know for certain,” Chandrakanta said teasingly. ‘Star’ was her pet name for a mutual friend of theirs. The Megami enjoyed giving those close to her pet names. She lifted her hands up to hover to the sides of Elena’s head. “Let me in?” Elena didn’t directly answer, but closed her eyes and relaxed in anticipation of Chandrakanta’s psychic touch.
The Megami was fairly transparent as she's examined the Grandelf's mind and memories. Flickers of recollection from the ride to the homestead and the search for survivors flew by, which Elena knew meant Chandrakanta wasn't discovering anything worth longer examination. Then Elena found herself back in the great emptiness as if she was back there herself, reliving the interactions with the man who was here and now a boy.
The telepathic connection severed with a snap like a flimsy and worn string. Elena opened her eyes to see the bright white opalescent disks shining from within Chandrakanta's sockets. The Megami's wide-eyed gaze shot to the unconscious boy on Elena's couch. "Candi, what is it?"
Chandrakanta didn't answer right away; she was intently studying the human. “Nell, I believe you found someone rather remarkable.”
“What do you mean?”
“I should not say more. At least not until we are sure your friend the sheriff won’t overhear.”
Elena’s eyebrows and ears lifted with intrigue. “Well then, let’s go see if he’s still around.” The two exited the small home and went to find the sheriff.
Moments after they had left a shadow flitted across the moon before a winged figure plummeted out of the sky in a dive, flaring her wings to shed most of her velocity before dropping to her feet, absorbing the force of impact in a display of strength with no audience. She was taller than Elena by at least her head and shoulders with a few more centimeters of height granted to her by modest upwards curving horns. Her body was that of a fighter’s, broad shouldered, long limbed, and tightly muscled with a few soft, supple, and erotic accents dressed in a sharply tailored business dress and jacket cut from high quality wool dyed deeply black. Her sharp features were unhidden by her hair which was pulled back into a professionally styled bun. In particular she had exquisitely sculpted cheeks with the bone and muscle forming an edge that looked like it was capable of cutting. Her wings dissolved into sulfurous smoke and a thin tail swished behind her as her gold-set-on-black eyes swept the immediate surroundings and then focused on the windows and doors of the house before her. She couldn’t see anyone she was looking for so the newly arrived infernal went around to the other side of the house, away from the direction Elena and Chandrakanta had ventured to find Denys, Tanya, and Rahela.
Inside Elena’s home, the boy who had been left unattended on the couch finally had awoken. He sat in dazed confusion as he took in all of the sensations of this brand new world he had found himself in. His mind swam through the confusing over-stimulation as it attempted to reestablish what was and was not to be filtered out and ignored after so much time, time beyond his memory, without any sensation. It was in this state that the blue skinned infernal happened upon him, sitting quietly on the couch.
‘Elena got herself a boy toy?’ She thought to herself. A devilish grin spread across her lips. ‘I didn’t know she liked them young.’ She ducked through another doorway and strode into the room to take a dominant stance in front of the human occupying the couch. “My my. Elena left such a beautiful thing all alone? Would you like some company, darling?” Her voice was feminine but low, almost underlaid with the rumble of a large cat. This was partially on account of her size and partially because projecting a strong and low voice made her seem more dangerous and authoritative; two qualities she placed importance on demonstrating to the outside world. She leaned in close, bending low to present the best view of her cleavage. “I promise, I’ll be gentle… enough.” The boy’s expression was blank and his attention was on her face in spite of the show she was putting on for him, which irritated her. “Are you deaf? Mute? Where is Elena?"
The boy’s mouth moved silently for a bit and he seemed to be trying to look past the pokegirl in front of him. “Eh… lay… nuh…? Elana?” He mumbled the name to himself and started to glance about looking for something, or someone.
The infernal’s hand shot out to take firm hold of the boy’s lower jaw. “If you don’t know Elena, why are you on her couch? Who are you,” she demanded to know.
“Who am I?” The boy was focused on her now but still in a state of total befuddlement. The infernal was not a patient individual to begin with and, regardless of his size and disposition, an unknown human in the home of her friend meant a danger to her friend. She abandoned polite etiquette and summoned her own telepathic powers to discover the identity of this male even if he wasn’t forthcoming. Or functionally intelligent.
-
“You two don’t let anything happen to that boy. I’ll call into regional tomorrow and see if I can’t get any idea who he might be.” Denys Kohut half-shouted to them from astride Tanya as his two centaur pokegirls began trotting down the path to town.
The Grandelf and Megami watched the three backs for a couple of minutes before Elena turned to her friend and asked, “All right, he’s gone. Now what about that boy is remarkable?”
“Well, I’m not certain, but do you remember around ten years ago when there were all those rumors about extra-dimensional humans causing all sorts of excitement and upheaval?”
“I heard some things, yes. It all sounded a bit too fantastical to me. Are you saying that man I encountered has something to do with that?”
“I’m not sure but-" Chandrakanta’s eyes snapped wide open again, fear shrinking her pupils to pinpoints and making her prism-tinted irises flash with the light from the moon above them. “Nell, I have to go save Star! She’s inside the house!” With that the Megami teleported and vanished.
The premonition Chandrakanta had received had only informed her that ‘Star’ was in Elena’s home, that she would die without Chandrakanta’s intervention, and that intervention was to be telepathic in nature. While her premonitions sometimes lead her to tragedy and often into hardship, they never lead her wrong so she reached out with her psionic abilities to connect with her imperiled friend’s mind at the same time she teleported. The instant relocation did bring her body into the house, but a third presence pulled her psyche somewhere else.
The Megami felt as though she had been plunged into some icy depths of water, freezing and crushing and totally dark. Her instinct was to attempt to swim and try to find the surface, but she knew it was not water though. She had determined from examining Elena’s memories that the Grandelf, and now herself, had entered something not dissimilar to a mental construct created through dream time, a vast and bleak mental construct in this case. The friend she needed to save was somewhere within the dreamscape as well, but none of them were the architect. Chandrakanta forced herself into as calm of a state as she could and extended her senses as far as she could. She had to act quickly. She was afraid that without whoever was responsible for this space’s help, she had no hope of a successful rescue and could very well drown within this gloomy abyss herself.
A streak of light like a shooting star dropped from above and plunged through the infinite black, creating a pocket of ‘air’ around Chandrakanta as the ‘water’ was pushed away from a luminescent being hovering before her. He was the man Elena had met, but more. More realized. More possessing of discernible features. Currently worried features. “You’re here to save her, your friend?”
“I am.” Chandrakanta felt like she had to shout above an unseen raging storm to be heard.
“You can’t.” The certainty he said it with crushed the Megami’s hopes. “You can help me though. I can’t find her by myself.”
“What do I need to do?” She asked firmly.
“Focus on her. Focus on her mind, what she feels like when you’re connected with hers.” Chandrakanta did as she was told and focused on the telepathic signature of her friend. She felt a presence and power entering into her, something entangled itself with her heart and made her feel warm, weak, and wanting. A faint blue glimmer started to shine deep, deep below them.
-
To Astoreth, the infernal Chandrakanta referred to as Star, it felt like being in a vacuum. Cold, searing, boiling, crushing, and tearing her apart all at the same time. She hadn’t felt anything like it since the war.
The war… Was she going to die here like this after living through that? Without leaving anything she’d be remembered for?
She deserved it…
Didn’t she?
Astoreth had been on the brink of death more than a few times; brought back from medical death at least once. She was lost within those familiar borderlands once again and her thoughts were becoming painfully slow, but those were the approximation of what they were when a blinding thunderbolt crashed all about her, filling the void around her with heat and pressure. Chandrakanta was suspended in the middle of the sphere held in the palm of one of infinite hands belonging to some great being of awe and menace formed of bleeding mountains crowned by a sky filled to darkness with stormclouds except for the ceaseless flashes of lightning arcing between them.
That was how Astoreth would recall the incident, anyway.
Chandrakanta grabbed ahold of her and began channeling as potent of healing magic as she could, but it wasn’t working. Of course it wasn’t working. She wasn’t really here, neither was her Star. They were psychic projections upon a psychic world. Everything was an abstract representation. Astoreth looked shattered, like she was an image painted on a sheet of glass that had been smashed. Something vague and out of focus filled the space between the cracks but it was slowly dissolving into the nothing around them. Chandrakanta looked up at Elena’s acquaintance desperate for more guidance. “Keep healing her.”
“It’s not working!” She cried out despairingly.
“That doesn’t matter, I need to you keep visualizing making her whole.” Comprehension filled the Megami’s gemstone eyes and she went back to concentrating on mending one of her precious loved ones. Her efforts saw fruition as the vague form of Astoreth stitched itself back together and sharpened in focus.
The entire scene seized and abruptly ended, casting the three minds back into waiting bodies.
Astoreth coughed violently in a spray of blood. I had been pouring out of both nostrils to drip off the tip of her chin, and now it was all over Elena’s couch and the boy who had been sitting on it. She was also profusely bleeding from her ears and eyes, unable to see or hear, and her skull felt like it was going to burst open from the pulsing ache. She reflexively wrapped herself in the healing energies of a Dark Cocoon and levitated to prevent any fall injuries. Someone had hold of her so she instinctively started to struggle against the presumed attacker until she felt her head cradled and face pressed against a familiarly ample bosom. She was beginning to pick up sounds besides the torturous ringing in her ears. Elena was there as well as Chandrakanta, who was the one holding her head. She wasn’t being attacked.
“Star, stop fighting!” The infernal’s struggles reduced and transitioned from desperate thrashing to determined resistance. “Star!”
“I’ll put her to sleep so be ready to catch her.”
“I’m not going to sleep and I don’t need anyone to catch me. Let me go.” The Grandelf and Megami did not let her go, but did open up more personal space for her. Astoreth slapped away Chandrakanta’s hands a few more times as the Megami kept trying to apply more healing. She was stable and would finish healing herself.
Unlike her celestial friend, Elena was accepting of Astoreth’s bullheaded insistence on self-sufficiency so she went over to examine the damage to the boy and her couch. She sighed to herself from the sight of the blood splattered upholstery and then met the eyes of the couch’s occupant. “Elena.”
The leap of the Grandelf’s heart upon hearing her name cross his lips was so mighty it was almost painful. She felt her cheeks and the tips of her ears flush with heat. He was blushing too. Someone behind her, either Chandrakanta, Astoreth, or both of them, gasped sharply.
There was an intoxicating deluge of emotion; confusion, concern, fear, relief, joy, affection, arousal, loneliness and a vast underlying depression. A white flash emanated from the boy and remained illuminating the room in blinding incandescence. When it faded the walls, floor, ceiling, and all of Elena’s furnishings were gone, replaced by an artificial island cut from a single, circular white stone surrounded by a black, rippleless ocean that stretched out forever, never curving out of sight over a horizon. Elena’s companion was there now, where the boy had been, and Elena was standing right before him while Chandrakanta and Astoreth were right behind her. There was something in the air between them, lines emanating from the male and ending at each of the three pokegirls. “What happened? Where are we? Why are we back here?” The tether between Elena and the man reverberated with the questions she asked, and the tethers of the other two resonated with its frequency.
“I don’t know,” the being said. The world around them flickered and in the span of a blink Elena’s home was back and gone again. “You’ve always came here on your own. Elena came here first, that’s what woke me up. Then Astoreth tried to force her way into my mind and was pulled here. Chandrakanta arrived through Astoreth.”
Astoreth and Chandrakanta moved up to stand beside Elena. The infernal spoke first. “Wait, you’re that boy? You are not a child, why do you look like a child?”
“I tried to enter your world after meeting Elena, but ‘that boy’ was all I could manage. Where we are right now is outside of that reality and I couldn’t pass through the boundaries, so I pushed him through. He is me, but not all of me…” Elena, Chandrakanta, and Astoreth felt the intensity of his deliberation upon his own nature.
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Astoreth stated flatly.
“I’m sorry, it’s all I can say right now.”
“Well, can you at least tell me your name now?” The infernal’s next inquiry was blurted out as the tether between the two of them began to glow with a rosey blush.
“I… can’t. I was trying to tell Elena, I only remember one name but I don’t think it should be used. It’s strange but it seems to have some power. It’s what was drawing me towards your universe. Or one nearby… It’s like trying to see… one raindrop that’s falling… Or a single glimmer from a cluster of stars.”
“My- our- The universe? Universes? What are you talking about?” Chandrakanta put a hand on Astoreth’s shoulder.
“Star, easy. He’s told us all he can.”
“I- I know. I know. It’s just… This is… a lot.”
Chandrakanta smiled gently and then passed her fingers through the ethereal binding between her and the human figure. She gazed down at her feet and tapped her toes against the white stone. All eyes followed her as she knelt by the edge of the water and brushed her fingers against the surface. Her fingertips froze into black crystal, then the darkness rushed up her limb but was not substantial enough to make it much past her elbow before the warmth of her life thawed it out. She wiped away at a tear that fell from the deep sadness that invaded her heart as she rose back to her feet. “This place is a mental construct, isn’t it? Did you make it?”
“I… I suppose so. I needed somewhere the three of you could be safe, somewhere stable. Somewhere above the surface.”
“The surface of what?”
“Me. My memories. It’s all down there somewhere. In the emptiness.” Chandrakanta’s frown matched the expression of the figure.
Elena was less interested in the space and more in her companion. “You remember more?” The image of the man stretched and contracted around the head, giving the impression of him nodding in affirmation and shaking his head in negation of the question at the same time.
“I am more awake. I haven’t really recalled anything more but what I do recall makes more sense.”
“Then we need a name we can call you. What about Isaac?” Chandrakanta and Astoreth looked surprised at their Grandelf friend’s suggestion, but did not oppose it.
“I… I guess. I like that name. It’s familiar to me. Isaac.” He looked to the edges of the white stone island and saw that it was wavering. “You need to go now. It won’t be safe longer. I don’t want any of you to wind up down there again. ” Astoreth shivered compulsively.
“How do we leave?” Elena asked standing in the middle of her living room. “Oh…”
For a few minutes they were silent. Elena got a cloth for Isaac to wipe off with. Chandrakanta and Astoreth used some utilitarian magic to clean the blood out of their friend’s couch. They attempted to then discuss matters concerning Isaac; what to do about Denys sending an inquiry to regional police command concerning Isaac’s identity. What Chandrakanta suspected regarding him and how it was connected to the international upheaval of a decade ago. Even more mundane matters like where Isaac would sleep and if it was acceptable, given his apparent age, for anyone to join him. It was decided they would discuss the first two points in the morning over an early breakfast and that it was better to be safe and have Isaac sleep alone on the couch in regards to the latter. No one brought up the peculiarity of their shared emotions yet or what that implied.
(-[|]-) End 1.2 (-[|]-)
Despite his exhaustion, Isaac could not calm down to let sleep come. The cushions and bedding felt different. The ceiling wasn’t the right height away from him and it was sloped. The sounds of night animals were strange and the smell of the home was unfamiliar as well. He’d always been prone to anxiety and often struggled with becoming restful, especially in environments outside of what he considered home. That was something he remembered about himself.
Isaac heard footsteps. A soft glow shone into the living room from the small kitchen / dining room on the other side of an interior wall. Isaac could hear water being poured from a pitcher and then footsteps resumed padding across the floor. They were coming closer.
Chandrakanta, dressed in a short nightgown, passed through the entryway and put a glass of water on the coffee table in front of Elena’s couch. Isaac sat up as she approached. “Couldn’t sleep?”
The Megami smiled warmly and sat down next to him. “I can’t sleep because you can’t sleep.” Isaac’s expression indicated he failed to make a connection. “I’m particularly empathetic, even for a Megami. I can feel your mind racing.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She shook her head gently once, her hair swishing against the silk of her lingerie. “You’ve been through a lot, I understand why you’re having trouble. I may be able to help, if you will allow me.” Isaac murmured his consent.
Chandrakanta took his shoulders into her hands and pulled him back down to lay on the couch with her hugging him from behind. “Focus on my breath,” she told him. So he did. He felt the push against his back as she inhaled and the warm tickle against his scalp as she exhaled. He could hear the soothing beat of her heart in her chest; soft, steady, and even. Her scent was tranquil and reminded Isaac of calming incense. Something in his mind informed him she was using a pokegirl technique, Aura of Tranquility, but he didn’t resist and as the influence of the celestial embracing him drove out the unease he finally felt the weight of his exhaustion and quickly succumbed to sleep.
Chandrakanta had meant to help him sleep and then return to bed with Elena and Astoreth but something held her in place on the couch. Holding Isaac felt just as, if not more, right than holding those two. She was so enamoured with the feeling that she failed to ward off sleep herself and entered the land of dreams while holding onto him.
She was under a bright sun shining down on a lush landscape and great stone building of ancient pyramid design, although not any particular style of pyramid. She climbed the stairs to the summit and found herself standing before a throne. Seated upon it was a man of godly proportions, taller than Astoreth and radiating with power. Every fiber of her being knew it was her purpose to serve this great man, she had been waiting for three hundred years for the chance to serve, and so service him she did, in all the ways a pokegirl could.
“Suprabhaat, mere prabhu.”
Isaac came to waking hearing those foreign words and feeling lips parting from his own. There was a pleasant and warm weight upon his body and through his blurred vision saw an image of beauty hovering over him. He blinked away the sleep remaining in his eyes and recognized the face of Chandrakanta, who also appeared to have just awoken herself and wasn’t entirely sure how she wound up in such a position.
Something warm and sticky dripped down onto his chest. He inspected it with a finger and easily recognized the substance. Ejaculate. Chandrakanta focused on it too, then looked down at herself and practically flew off from on top of Isaac.
“Oh, oh no. No-nono. Isaac I’m so sorry.” The Megami sounded mortified and looked like she was going to cry.
“Wha… What are you sorry about? What happened.”
“I…” Chandrakanta’s violently red blush wasn’t hidden by her hanging her head and turning her face away from him. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep with you and then I had a dream. I must have acted it out in my sleep and… and I… I didn’t mean to. I’d never without your… your…”
“Candi,” Isaac was surprised he used that name, but something in his mind told him it was right to use it. Chandrakanta looked surprised as well, but some of the dread in her face briefly was replaced by something a more positive expression. “It’s fine. I was having the same sort of dream and didn’t want to wake up either.”
The Megami stopped statue still for a moment and examined Isaac through her perpetually lidded eyes. Then a wave of relaxation fluttered down her body like a fine piece of fabric dropped from up in the air. “Right. Right. I’m sorry. I just panicked and didn’t want you to hate me.” She let out a dramatic sigh and then comically puffed out her chest, putting the full absurdity of her Milktit heritage on display. “Well, I suppose I should make the most out of the situation.” She smiled, which meant that her eyes retreated even further behind the dark veil of her lashes. She stood up and marched dutifully to the entryway into the kitchen. She began a long and theatrical stretch of both arms over her head as she rounded the corner and walked some more steps through the kitchen. Based on his understanding of the architecture she was heading back towards Elena’s bedroom.
Astoreth’s voice came through the wall. “Why did you come from that room? Why are you falling out of your gown? WHY IS THERE SEMEN BETWEEN YOUR BREASTS?!”
The ensuing argument was long and repetitive with Astoreth accusing Chandrakanta of breaking their agreement that Isaac was to be off limits and Chandrakanta stating it was an accident over and over. It went on and on and only ended with Elena reminding Chandrakanta that she was the one who said she could call in a favor with a clerk at the regional police command who would presumably forge the records they needed for their plan.
There was a program in the Sapphire League where orphans could be placed with farming families, a home in exchange for more helping hands. The only issue was that this cover necessitated Isaac be officially recognized as under the Sapphire League age of majority, sixteen. In fact, following this scheme the oldest he could be was not quite fifteen assuming he had a birthday in the early autumn. Isaac remembered that his birthday was in the first week of September anyway so that part of the identity would not be difficult to assume, at the least.
With that established, Elena would use her academic connections to get Isaac enrolled in one of the Vorona Corps tamer academies. There should not be too much of a fuss over a lack of identifying papers, given his falsified background as an orphan and especially one that went on to survive the extinction of the homestead that took him in. While Chandrakanta was away enacting their subterfuge, Elena and Astoreth decided to test Isaac’s level of fitness to be sure he could pass the academy’s entry requirements. They concluded Isaac could pass muster. Barely.
Now he was showering off. Elena had taken Astoreth aside for her opinion on consequences for Chandrakanta’s transgression from the morning.
Astoreth personally was confused and enraged in response to her moral guide cheating to win, even if she claimed it wasn’t intentional her selfish and impulsive actions had been rewarded. Astoreth had restrained herself and she missed the opportunity to make the first move on the male they’d all been bonded to. Elena and Chandrakanta had overruled her proposal to confront Isaac about the matter, with the Megami being the one to propose allowing him to bring it up on his own. So, since the celestial was the person Astoreth went to when she struggled with a question of morality and ethics she deferred. Now she was suspicious of that having been some sort of subterfuge so that ‘Candi’ could seize the victory.
Astoreth was also aware that she often made the worst assumptions about the motivations and internal reasoning of others.
So she had been trying to prevent her emotions from affecting her judgement, which Elena interpreted as her not being as upset as she had assumed, so then the Grandelf modified her proposed punishment to be less severe, and Astoreth had already put emotional responses on hold and so agreed with Elena’s assessment and modification dumbly.
Now Elena had stepped outside for gardening leaving Isaac unguarded again and Astoreth now knew the punishment was soft enough to endure for the sake of the prize. This was at least what she had resolved in her mind after a small deal of contemplation standing outside Elena’s bathroom door listening to the sound of water through the walls.
Isaac was lost in trancelike introspection under the steaming showerhead when the curtain was pulled away. She was the same blue as Astoreth, had the same features as Astoreth, and composed herself and moved in the same ways as Astoreth. Isaac’s mind raced to make sense of things and he began to prepare an apology for using all of the hot water when an observation made it to his consciousness.
Astoreth was naked. What was more she was nearly half of her usual height and her frame had slimmed down and smoothed out. Her cheeks were still exquisitely cut though, and her unreduced breasts seemed fuller on the smaller body. “You’re small.” Isaac stated his observation.
The small Astoreth’s eyes were too narrowed to properly roll. “I have two forms. This is my reduced one. I assume it when I don’t want someone to feel threatened.”
“Then why have you been in your battle form this entire time?”
“What do you mean? Why would I advertise to enemies that I’m not ready to fight?” Her eyebrows knitted together as if she was concerned and her head started to tilt slightly to the side. Her attention returned to him with a snap. “Like you. I hate how weak you act. You make yourself small like I should be hunting you. Dominating, at least.”
“I might be into it.” Isaac found himself surprised the words managed to tumble out and he started blushing so hard it felt like needles under his skin.
Astoreth’s eyebrow rose a twitch. “Is that so” She asked impishly. He kept eye contact with her as she leaned in closer and didn’t flinch when she took hold of both his wrists and pressed them against the wall of the shower over his head. His resolve held in the face of her final warning, a slowly stretching grin of a triumphant predator.
One set of fingers locked like a vice while the others shot out to seize soap and rag. With abundant suds and rough scrubbing she cleaned him front and back save for one spot. She tossed the wash cloth against his chest and theatrically flicked her eyes towards his groin. “Finish up.” She said with a nod of her chin as she stepped out and wrapped herself in a towel.
Isaac peeled the wet rag from where it stuck after he failed to catch it. He muttered while fighting not to show anymore obviously how flustered he was from the ordeal. “I’ll think of Chandrakanta,” he offered up as a counter.
Astoreth’s eyebrow jumped one more hair and she poured forward while bending over to accommodate her battle form. She took his jaw with the force of a caress. “No…” She purred deeply as she leaned in to press her lips against his ear, “you won’t.”
She traced her nail under his chin and walked away, the towel now too small to conserve any of her modesty. As soon as she felt Isaac's gaze leave her she melted down to fit through the doorway, knowing Elena was standing with her arms crossed; leaning against the wall just outside. The stonefaced Grandelf did not speak first, so Astoreth did. “I think he might trust me, Elena…” Astoreth said in a tiny voice her friend had heard precious few times before.
Elena’s expression softened though she maintained her standoffish posture. “That’s good, Star. You know there’s going to be consequences though.”
Astoreth nodded. “Mmm.” She walked ahead of Elena to the door and was surprised when the Grandelf stepped around her to lean down and hug her in her diminutive form.
“I’m glad you trust him enough to see you like this, too.” Astoreth broke free from the embrace by surging up to her 240 centimeter form and started to make room for her ascent. “I’ll call you when Chandrakanta gets back and we’ll have a meeting to discuss things.” The infernal nodded brusquely and then catapulted herself into the air.
Elena clicked her tongue in annoyance as she fetched her bath towel from the shrubs where it had fallen from Astoreth's ascending body.
-
“-but I was able to talk her into putting it in the system in time before your good sheriff called so our boy here is Isaac Markiyan, approximately fourteen-and-a-half years old. He was placed into one of the Vasylk families as part of the league’s foster program until he could enlist at whichever tamer academy sees fit to grant his petition for entry.”
Elena nodded. “And besides giving Denys more fuel for his wild Martian speculations-” she leveled a glare at the Megami, “I had to listen to him go on about how many names come back to ‘Mars’ and how all of the ancient planets have been warring over projecting their influence on Earth since before human history for fourty minutes, Candi,” the Grandelf growled. “-he’s willing to vet for him staying under my care until this fall when he’ll enter.”
“Excuse me, your care? I have the greatest wealth accumulated and live close to some of the most elite academies in all of eastern Sapphire. He’d be best off staying with me.” Astoreth showed her hand.
“No offense Star, but the League would consider your residence unfit for human minors because of your rehabilitation efforts. The head matron of St. Sophia’s owes me, I could get Isaac placed within their boarding school and stay at the covenant to watch over him.” Chandrakanta placed down hers.
“While I’m sure both of you will use your resources and connections to their fullest to help all of us, as of now I am the only one not guilty of sexually assaulting a minor in the eyes of the league. I believe, for the sake of none of us falling foul of the justice system,” Elena spoke the last two words like they were poison, “he should remain here with me. Besides, my place is the best to avoid attention.” The Sapphire League did allow manumitted pokegirls among its population, but when a free pokegirl was convicted of a crime she was stripped of the rights granted to her by the League and placed into the court’s possession to be disposed of at the court’s pleasure. Pokegirl citizens also had never had the full legal protections human citizens were privileged to during court proceedings. Finally, all positions on the judge’s bench were positions appointed by Sapphire League congressmen and so were most often rewarded to donors and cronies who did not have dispositions suitable to public servants.
Elena’s trump card claimed the trick, and the two of them had already agreed to exile from Elena’s home for a week for their indiscretions involving Isaac.
Isaac was still seated at the table when Elena returned from seeing Chandrakanta and Astoreth outside. The Grandelf sat down beside him and traced Isaac’s gaze for a while. Once she was sure he’d admired all of the grain pattern of her table she decided it was on her to break the silence, for all of their sakes. “Chandrakanta thought you needed time to sort things out yourself, but I’m starting to think you’ll never stop beating yourself up over it if someone doesn’t stop you.” Isaac remained nonverbal as she felt his angst growing. “Isaac, we know. We’re not upset.”
Something in his mind was starting to panic like a cornered animal. He couldn’t believe her words. It went against what he knew about himself. It was better to not be noticed. It was better to avoid new people. It was better to just assume everyone was either worthless ignorami, self absorbed mid-wits, or a threat. He couldn’t understand how this part of him was what had grown to dominate his presumptions and he hated it, which directed his hate inward and tipped him further into the spiral.
She sighed and closed her eyes to focus. She breathed in deeply and as she released it she reached out to the only one of them still struggling to stay afloat in that vast and bleak ocean, both with her hand and across the bond they’d all been failing to acknowledge. Isaac…
The storm broke for the time and he finally looked at first her approaching hand and then her. He was fighting to not show an expression but the intensity of his effort gave his features an uncanny stillness. He did not withdraw though.
She placed the tips of her fingers on his forearm but only with the weight of her hand. Her fingers were long and slender, though the pinky being much shorter dropped away first. The shared tendons pulled down on her ring finger and she let it fall away as well but the top came back in contact with his skin. The soft pads under the distal phalanges warped from the soft pressure, increasing the skin to skin contact between them by a small yet also significant amount. “May I tell you why I suggested that name?” He stopped fighting against his own emotional expressions as he seized on the small curiosity her question elicited.
“I told you about my first master, Izaak, and I’m sure you’ve realized I didn’t pick Isaac accidentally.
“They’re not the same though, and I don’t expect you to be him. But you do represent the same thing he did for me way back when I first met him. Possibility. A possibility I’d never dared to believe was possible before. I don’t know what that is yet with you. I would like to find out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For bonding you and Chandrakanta and Astoreth to me.”
“Why do you think you did this?”
“I just know it somehow. I remember it’s how I found you today and somehow it’s also how I was able to not… not kill Astoreth. I almost killed her.”
“I’ve almost killed her twice. She hasn’t held either against me and she already likes you more than she liked me our first time. I know that’s a part of why she’s curious. She wants to understand how you were able to thwart her and she is the proudest person I know. I’d count on it being an obsession of hers.”
“She’s not afraid of me?”
“Isaac, you can feel her feelings for you.”
“But what if I made her feel that way?”
Elena laughed, and Isaac couldn’t understand why she was laughing and the paranoid skulker in him started to become angry under the assumption it was at his expense. Elena hadn’t laughed particularly hard though so she quickly apologized and answered. “I’m sorry, but I know what you mean by ‘made her’ and, no. No you did not. No one can compel Astoreth against her will. You did, however, make her feel something. Hopeful. You’re going to learn just how significant what she shared with you today was. At least I hope you will. I hope you will learn more about all three of us. We’ve only had each other for a long time and while I couldn’t ask for two better friends, we still can’t make it in this world on our own. We never could.”
“But that’s why I hate it! You can’t decide whether or not to-” He flinched away from the arctic chill that entered her eyes for a fraction of a breath.
“I’m sorry Isaac, but I guess I’m like Astoreth in some ways. Yes, you will influence us through the bond but we are not enslaved to it because we can feel that you do not want us enslaved. We can feel how repulsed you are by the idea and we can feel how much you’re struggling with the idea that we didn’t have a choice in this. Neither did you.”
“But I’m the one who did it!”
“You said yourself you were not awake. If you hadn’t awoken I probably would have been lost like we almost lost Astoreth. Later, it was the circumstances that dictated you connect with her and Chandrakanta. I can speak for all three of us. It’s what those two were trying to demonstrate to you with their advances. We want to keep this with you.”
They held each other’s gaze for a while longer, but in the end Isaac resolved to accept her words as the truth. At least as true as she could speak them. He slumped in the chair as his body gave up on maintaining its heightened state. Elena smiled and tousled his hair, which she still couldn’t help but feel drawn to touch.
(-[|]-) End 1.3 (-[|]-)
‘Suprabhaat mere prabhu’ (सुप्रभात मेरे प्रभु): “Good morning my lord” Hindi
Elena sent a short message to Astoreth and Chandrakanta. They had been disappointed to learn that Isaac had enrolled into a Vorona Corps pre-academy before their exile from Elena’s home expired. It read:
Isaac will have a long weekend starting Thursday, September 4th. Saturday we will be celebrating his 15th birthday. He has a boyfriend, Sasha, who will also be coming.
She smirked as she watched the file sending indicator.