Page 63 of It Varies
“I think I did, but I am pretty sure your tentacle got tired.”
“I will flex it later.The exercise was good for it.”He chuckled and rinsed them off before sliding a robe over her shoulders and wrapping it around her.
He dressed second, and she had to ask.“So my voice has been fixed.Either that or you have a strange fantasy life.”
He laughed.“It wasn’t my intention to choke you with it, but when your eyes got dreamy, I just had to see what you could take.”
She made a fist and punched him in the ribs.“No lady likes that kind of a surprise.Living out hentai scenes isn’t my idea of fun.”
He smiled, and they went to have tea.Mao brought it in and paused.“Lady, how badly did I screw up?”
“Well, you were kind to her when no one has been, you held her when no one has, and you fed her when no one else has...and then she learned it was just because of me, or rather because Kazuya suggested that it would be good for you to do.”Vine smiled.“So, in thanks for the offer of blood at a later time, she gave you the heat.Use it for a marathon jerk-off session or something.Don’t worry about her missing it.She said another one is two months away.”
Kazuya froze.“Oh, shit.Is she going to be all right?”
Vine swallowed through the lump in her throat and said, “I don’t know.She can’t have the man she first identified, she can’t have Mao because he doesn’t want her, she can’t have a flier because it is incest for the pixies, and she’s looking for a mate.Now she knows how to bottle the heats, but she should have been able to do that sooner.I feel stupid for not actually asking her questions.”
He asked, “What would you have asked?”
“How she survived what happened to her.I would have asked why she helped me, why she could keep my spirits up when they were tormenting her.She hid me for months.Brought me a book that let me conjure food right off.She made me the items I needed for conjuring.That was her base skill.The pottery.”
Mao said, “Did they abuse her?”
“Yes.I know that for certain.”She rubbed her forehead.“I figured it out later.”
Kazuya asked a question she rarely gave an accurate answer to.“How long were you there?”
“I think it was close to two years.Meeda was there before me, but she needed me to open the portal, so she had to wait until I had the skills.We stole and grabbed all the grimoires we could.”
Mao asked, “You didn’t have heats?”
“I was thirteen, so no.”
He paused.“How old was Meeda?”
“Fifteen, sixteen.She seemed so tall and strong, but she was waiting for something.”
Mao asked, “What?”
“Her wings.The day she could activate them, we left.”
Kazuya reached around and pulled her onto his lap.“What happened on that day?”
“She came in, staggering, covered with blood.Some was hers, and the rest had the colour of death.She told me that it was time to go.Could I make a portal?I said yes, and she picked me up carefully, walked to the window of the rotting tower we were in, and then she jumped.I screamed, but her wings snapped out and started humming as they pulled us through the air.She told me we had to get out of the city before the portal would be possible.I felt it.I felt the moment we crossed the threshold, then I opened the portal, and she dove into it.There was a wrenching, and I was pulled from her arms and thrown to the concrete that I had been pulled from.When I bumped into her at the Chamber of Commerce, she told me that she was younger than she is now.She had been pulled from a different point in time.”
Mao asked, “Where did she come from?Did she say?”
“Pirates had murdered her parents, and their ship had been sunk.She was hiding in it, and it was going under, but she could hear their engines circling.That was when the shadows grabbed her, and that is what she was returned to.”
He pulled out his phone.“What is her last name?”
“Akorin.”
He looked, opened articles, and gasped.“Oh, fuck.She was thirteen during the attack.It was the day before her fourteenth birthday.That is why they were there.It was a celebration.”
When Vine heard the date, she paused.“I have seen her a few times on her birthday.She doesn’t celebrate, and that is just sad.”
Mao grunted.“I hope she finds a good alpha.”
