Chapter 88 Destined.

Chapter 88: 88 Destined.

Juniper and I headed out across the property. This morning was jacket weather. Her tail left a wide flat track through the grass behind us, and every few steps her little black wings adjusted for balance when the ground sloped.

I tried not to stare at the way her hips moved where human body transitioned to snake, because that particular junction had been occupying an unreasonable amount of my mental real estate lately, and staring would be creepy. I stared a little anyway. Sue me.

We walked in silence for a while. I know that sounds boring, but after weeks of Elsa’s running commentary, Ayra’s enthusiastic barking, and now Clementine’s creative profanity, walking next to someone quiet and reserved was a nice change of pace.

"Tell me about the Blasted Lands," I said after a while.

She glanced sideways at me. "Why?"

"Why not? What was it actually like growing up there?"

Her tail slowed. She chewed on the question for a few strides. "Lonely, mostly. I was the only child in my district who looked the way I do."

"So you stuck out."

"Yes." She kept her eyes forward. "The other children didn’t know what to do with me. In a country full of people who didn’t look the same, I looked somehow the most different."

"The tail?" I asked, arching a brow.

"The boobs, actually."

I nodded, glancing down briefly at her glorious milk factories just long enough to not be inappropriate. "For what it’s worth," I said, "I got the shit kicked out of me in middle school for being the tallest kid in class by four inches and not knowing what to do with any of it. My arms were too long, legs were too long, and I was even tripping over my own feet in PE. It’s not the same thing, obviously. But the part where you feel like you got assembled different from everyone else? Yeah. I know what that’s like."

"You grew into the height rather nicely, I’d say." Her red eyes flicked over me and then very deliberately forward again. "Champion."

I smiled softly. "And you grew into the tits. Well. I mean, they’re still disproportionately massive. I could use those fuckers as punching bags, but—"

"Okay, stop," she said, frowning a little.

"Sorry. My passion carried me away," I sighed. Thankfully she smiled a bit at that, no doubt thinking I was trying to be funny.

We’d reached the far edge of the property where the barn sagged against the sky and the grain silo stood next to it doing slightly better, structurally speaking. Juniper stopped and looked at it properly, running her gaze up from the cracked foundation to the weathered top.

"I still can’t believe you started planning to have this remodeled for me before we’d even met in person," she said. "Based on a dream."

"Based on common sense. You’re twenty-plus feet of snake tail. My hallway is three feet wide. Math said we needed more space for you to do your wizardy shit."

"Grey."

"Yeah?"

She turned to me, and whatever she was about to say got stuck. I watched her try to push it out. She opened her lips, closed them, frowned at herself, and then sighed. "I am trying to tell you how much that means to me, but I get flustered when I try to be effusive."

"You can be reserved. I got the message."

She smiled warmly, eyes crinkling at the corners. Grey 2 demanded I kiss her immediately, but I told him to sit down and shut up. She’d asked for her own pace, and that meant her own pace. Even when she was standing three feet away looking like that.

I reached out and tucked a stray curl behind one of her pierced ears instead, giving her the opening. She leaned into it for just a second, eyes closing, but when her tattoo started pulsing inside her top brightly enough to illuminate the space between us, she blushed and backed down.

"We should head back," she said. "Before your dog-girl tracks us by scent."

"She’d do it, too."

We walked back toward the house, and her tail bumped against my calf every few steps, which was probably an accident, but only about thirty percent of the time. The morning had been really, genuinely nice, and I was thinking about how weird it was that "nice" had become the most exciting thing in my life when six months ago "exciting" meant finding a twenty-dollar bill in a jacket pocket.

Which lasted right up until we opened the back door and heard screaming.

Elsa and Ayra were locked in mortal combat on Super Plumber Kart 64. The arena was Rainbow Highway, the most sadistic track in the game. Elsa’s character had just launched itself off the edge of the course and a little turtle man on a cloud was currently fishing her out of the abyss.

"Your mushroom power-up was STOLEN from my rightful reserves!" Elsa shrieked, mashing buttons so hard her whole body rocked back and forth on the couch. Her tiara had gone crooked, too. "That item was destined for me!"

"I earned that mushroom fair and square," Ayra yelled back, on her feet now, controller at arm’s length. Her tail was going so hard the armchair behind her had scooted three inches across the floor. "The Moon Mother rewards the worthy, Your Highness, and the worthy use their items instead of hoarding them! Why, I bet you’ll hoard your pussy away from master once he finally claims us, and I’ll be forced to offer him mine multiple times a day. Oh, how he’ll abusively ravish me, and—"

"Shut up! No he won’t! And no I won’t! My body will be his to use whensoever he desires! The First Maiden embraces her call to be the true love of the Champion, best prized in his—oh that fucking red turtle shell is so fucking unfair!"

Ayra just let out a little, "Tee hee!" in reply.

Clementine was enduring the scene too, curled up in the armchair with a bowl of cereal and the expression of someone watching a nature documentary narrated by Gilbert Gottfried. "They’re the worst people I’ve ever met in my entire life, bar none," she told us, cracking a smile at the end. "So they’re definitely growing on me."

On screen, Ayra’s character was pulling well ahead, hitting every curve, nailing every boost pad, drifting through turns like she’d been born in a go-kart.

"I am ROYALTY!" Elsa screamed as she drove off the track again. "The physics of this primitive entertainment device are fundamentally flawed! My inputs are too elegant to be accurately absorbed by the controller!"

"Ayra’s winning because she uses the brakes on those turns properly," I said.

"Brakes are a tool of the morally bankrupt!" Elsa’s whole body lurched forward as she death-gripped the controller. "A true warrior of Elfhaven meets every obstacle at FULL SPEED! This is the way of my people!"

"Your people would drive off a lot of cliffs then."

The final race ended. Ayra was in first. Elsa was eleventh out of twelve.

Ayra jumped up and pumped both fists. "VICTORY! I choose tonight’s entertainment! The Moon Mother has SPOKEN! Better luck next time, Your Highness!"

Elsa huffed and stood, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the stairs. "Take your prize. My prize shall be glorifying the penis of my one true love with my mouth."

Clementine and Juniper made brief eye contact and shrugged as one, but Ayra was entirely shaken by the abrupt move.

The dog-girl gasped, "N-n-no, wait! Let’s trade prizes! That’s not fair, princess! Princess—Your Royal Highness, wait for meeee!"

Clementine sighed and stood up, rolling her shoulders. "If you’re already doing this, then I get dibs on his face."

My heart did a pirouette in my chest when Elsa and Ayra looked at the horse girl, gave her an up-down glance, then nodded, and we all started walking upstairs.