Bearing Burdens

Yvara was surprisingly heavy in spite of her slim and fit figure. Still, John's enhanced strength had no problems carrying her home - even the mountain paths barely slowed them down.

"Well, Master, I didn't think anyone could match Sophia's dedication to you, but here we are. Why she might be even more fanatical, in every sense of the word," Vallya said, giggling as she floated lazily alongside the group.

"You're a Star Guardian, aren't you supposed to be just as devoted to me and this world?" John asked dryly.

Vallya had a reply half-formed on her lips, but it died in silence. Her gaze seemed distant, even troubled as she froze with her mouth half-open.

"Vallya?"

"Oh, y- of course, Master,” Vallya said, only half sounding as if she were even speaking to John.

"You seem a bit off, Vallya. Are you feeling alright?"

"Never better, Master," Vallya said, though she sounded even less sure than before.

John thought of pressing the matter, but there was already a glimmer of mischief playing in Vallya’s eyes again. Besides, pressing the Kitsune on any matter of importance was unlikely to yield any more information than she was willing to give up. Still… it was getting harder to move past the nagging voice in the back of his head listing off all of her strange behaviors lately.

Fortunately, aside from a few quick breaks for snacks from the oversized berry bushes along the way, the rest of their trip back home went quickly and without incident. The sun was still fairly high on the horizon – and John didn’t require sleep anymore anyway – but after the tension of the last month (and the last year beyond that, if he was being completely honest), John wanted nothing more in that moment than to lay down in bed and just let himself zone out.

“Sir, if I may…” Orria said, tapping him on the shoulder, not long after their home came into sight at the horizon. “Would you mind if I worked on terraforming the mountains a little? I think Yvara would welcome my aid, and although the marble is a wonder, I think a bit of gardening around the perimeter could add a lush beauty to it. I also want to investigate this marble deposit she found, and do some work to see if there are other minerals and resources that might be hidden within the mountain range we could make use of.”

“You can alter the mountains as much as you’d like, but make sure you don’t do anything too close to the temple without consulting Yvara. She’s been working hard on turning that into her own little slice of this world… I’m not so sure about her attitude toward me or the temple, but it’s honestly adorable how much enthusiasm she has for it,” John said, grinning as he cradled Yvara’s head in his hands, idly rubbing one of her horns with a thumb. Even in her sleeping state, she blushed slightly at the touch.

“Of course, sir!” Orria said, offering a cute half-salute.

“Actually, while you’re out there, whenever you have the time and energy, I’d appreciate you leveling out some of the land. Make enough room for a large manor, and some outer grounds beyond that. I can take care of it if you don’t have the time, but if the absolute worst happens and the Order has to come here for a while… I suppose we should ensure that they have enough room to build outward. I told Moira that I trust her, but I’d prefer her men keep to as far a corner of the world as possible. Unfortunate that Yvara had to choose to start building there…”

Orria’s hand tightened on John’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll get right on it. I’ve never actually seen the manor, about how much space do you think it will require?”

John stumbled for a few moments as he tried to recall the exact size of the Brighton Manor. It wasn’t as if he had ever seen a full blueprint, or had a proper aerial view of it. Still, he did his best to describe the general size of it to Orria as descriptively as possible. Most of it was based on his walking times and guesstimations based on the impressions he got of the building from outside, but Orria never grew frustrated or exasperated with his stumbling, often contradictory assessments. When at last John fell silent she only nodded lightly.

“Alright. I’ll see what I can do; it should be possible to make enough space for them, though it may require clear-cutting an entire mountain peak. But don’t worry about doing it yourself – I will have more than enough mana to reshape the land, even if I have to demolish an entire mountain range… I just hope that it doesn’t come to that. The world you’ve created is so beautiful, sir. I wouldn’t want to change it any more than necessary.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm for it, Orria. I really do. I’ll admit, I didn’t expect you to care about that region quite as much. Would it really bother you to clear out the mountains, even though they don’t have much plant life out there?” John asked. Orria did a fantastic job tending and studying the world, particularly the fruit-bearing bushes, but he hadn’t expected her to be so worried about the aesthetics of clearing the mountains. Most of the time he met her in the field, she was hanging around the forests, the river, or even the region of half-barren plains between the grasslands and the desert.

“Of course! You created this world, sir… and you created us as well. I feel the same sort of kinship for your other creations as I do for the women in your life,” Orria said, stepping forward and placing her hand gently on John’s face. “That includes this world and everything in it. Whether lush or barren, green or brown or black or gray… I love every part of it, and everything within it. I will do my best to take care of your mountains.”

John smiled at the enthusiasm dripping from her voice, and the sincerity in her eyes. John pulled her hand off his face and cupped it in both of his own, trying to return her intensity. “If that’s the case… then how about you design a piece of it?”

“Design…? You mean, I could choose our next expansion?” Orria said, the awe evident in her expression.

“Yes, that’s exactly it. Instead of clearing the mountains, we’ll expand across them and use the mountains as a border instead of a destination. Draw up a fully functional region on the other side of the mountains, something with water and enough land to feed a small army – and I mean that literally. Do you think you can handle that? Making something functional, and also something you’ll be proud of?”

Orria’s smile could’ve out-shined the sun, her beaming face nearly blinded him. “Yes, sir! Yes, I’ll get started right away! We’ll have to plan for food, water, shelter, resources… if you want them to be reliant upon us, I can leave out a few key things, if not, we’ll need to plan for…”

Orria continued to think out loud all the way back to their home. John tried to interject answers to what he thought were questions several times, but the most affirmative answer that he got was a brief nod. After a while John simply remained silent and smiled as Orria continued on her own tangent. Orria barely bid them farewell as they entered the living quarters, hardly noticed as she traipsed off to her own bedroom and left them behind. John gave a half-hearted roll of his eyes as he turned to Shishun and Vallya.

“I didn’t mean for that to be quite as much of an endeavor as it was, so before we go our separate ways, did either of you need anything?”

Shishun gripped her hands in a gesture reminiscent of a self-handshake and bowed her head, while Vallya just smirked.

“No, Master. I require nothing but your happiness.”

“I suppose I can forgive you… as long as you make it up to me later. Star Guardians are big on paying debts, you know?”

“Great, glad that’s settled,” John said, rolling his eyes at Vallya’s words. “Before we split up, which room has Yvara taken?”

Shishun broke in before Vallya could so much as open her mouth, pointing two fingers toward a door on a higher floor. “That is her room, Master. She has no possessions but we were able to convince her to scrawl her name on the outside of the door.”

John nodded, appreciating the effort it must have taken to get Yvara to “damage” anything of his world by carving her name into it when she first arrived. “Thank you, Shishun. For now I’m going to call it a night; there will be plenty of time tomorrow to fill everyone in and discuss the future. Pleasant dreams to the both of you.”

The two women offered him smiles of disparate sincerity as they made their way to their own rooms, leaving John to ascend the stairs and head to Yvara’s room alone. Despite the time that had passed, Yvara was still fully ****, or at least pretending to be. If he hadn’t felt her steady heartbeat and even breathing all the way home, he might have worried about her a bit more, but multiple Observations of her status window indicated nothing worth worrying about.

After checking her stats one final time, John gently lowered Yvara into her bed, careful to cradle her head both for safety and so as not to disturb her. John couldn’t help a slight grin that crossed his face as he watched a soft and surprisingly peaceful smile spread over Yvara’s lips as the soft cottons brushed her scaly form. He quietly made his way back to the door and exited Yvara’s room, staring at the hallway for a long moment.

"It won't be long now until we have to expand again..." John thought in mild wonder, before he began walking back toward his own bedroom. They still had several rooms free since the remodel, of course, but the number of new residents he had added since Purifying Orria and Shishun was adding up. And Maera was starting to look at Mithra’s litter with a little too much jealousy for John’s taste. Any day now she might demand kittens of her own, and John felt conflicted on exactly how to talk her down from it.

"Would it be so bad?"

The thought surprised John, yet he found that he did not immediately dismiss it. Though John had not really had any desires or thoughts of parenting prior to his exposure to the Abyss, was raising newborn magical children so different to Purifying more creatures into new life? Well, yes, honestly – it wasn’t as if he could ignore the age differences and how responsible he felt for them, not entirely. But there were plenty of parallels between the two anyway, and raising the kittens had not been so bad.

"Not that I’ve been around much to raise them lately,” John grumbled. That was the one reason he truly couldn't seriously consider more children, regardless of his personal opinion on the matter. The kittens were doing well with Mithra and Maera raising them, but they still missed him enough to make him feel guilty, and that was putting aside how they had nearly been stolen a year ago.

"Maybe when the world is a little more stable,” John mused as he finally reached his bedroom door. "Maybe after the war we could make Springfield into a-"

John trailed off as his hand was about to touch the handle of his bedroom door. From inside he could hear snoring - light but unmistakable. Sophia never snored, but John could attribute that to her intoxication so that part was easy to ignore.

What he couldn't ignore so easily was the second snore hidden under the first.

John gently opened the door, peering into the darkness. Atop his large bed were two figures half-entangled with one another. Sophia sprawled across the bed in a far sloppier manner than usual, and to John's surprise Farrah lay underneath one of the tall woman's large, muscular arms. She had a soft smile on her face and seemed completely comfortable.

John closed the door behind him as quietly as he could, hoping not to disturb them… All the same, as John flicked through his inventory to disrobe and slide under the sheets, Farrah's soft voice whispered in the dark.

"John? Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me. I wasn't expecting to see you here," John murmured.

"I wasn't sure whether I could just pick a room or if I should wait. While I was trying to decide, Sophia and the really fit girl – Lerianna? - came in. Sophia grabbed me and pulled me along with her. She said if I didn't have a bed yet, it was my duty to warm yours. Lerianna said she was ‘wasted’, what's that mean?"

"It means she's... it's hard to explain, she had something to drink, and it made her a little less, uh, "restrained". Don't worry too much about it, Farrah. Do you want me to help you up? We can get you your own room, you don’t have to stay here."

"No, that's okay. I don't mind. And she's very warm."

"Yeah, she really is. Alright," John said, a smile ghosting across his lips as he closed his eyes. “Goodnight, Farrah.”

“Um… John?”

"Yes, Farrah?" John said quietly, hoping Sophia was drunk enough to sleep through their conversation.

"What is sex?"

John's eyes opened wide in shock, then slammed shut again as he furrowed his brow and sighed. Now he really hoped that Sophia stayed asleep. No telling what that question might have started if she awoke in her state.