Everlasting Joy

The months went by as the summer slowly fell into a deep slumber. Passed fall and then winter to let spring rise from the ashes left by the scorching sun’s corpse. As the night slowly burns the sky to a deep crimson, drowning the city in red, there is a strange calm settling on the streets. Spring is always, each and every year, a time of renewed passions emboldened by the fire carefully watched over during the harsh winter. The sea froze late last year and ships were unable to provide for the needs of a good portion of the population. The upside were the slow mornings where hunters could go fishing on the cold expanse, carving holes in the ice and hunting with spears huge fishes that could feed an entire family. Neither Charlotte nor Lynnis did get to enjoy the rising sun on the frozen tides. Each and every moment of their lives were dedicated to taking care of themselves, and the small buds of life slowly burgeoning inside. Both pregnant, they benefited from the endless well of kindness that was the old midwife living across the street. Not a cat girl but some kind of feline herself, she did raise quite a few litter of her own and from other mothers. And so, she spent a lot of time preparing the girls for the big day to come. She made trips to the market to get the most nutritious food possible about every other day.. She made sure to be there each and every time they needed her… Charlotte was enamored with her, to the point of wanting to name her firstborn after her. Lynnis quickly denied her the fancy, arguing from a traditionalist point of view, making her the sole purveyor of names for her litter. Charlotte couldn’t resist. When they met, she said yes. She was hers to toy with.

She did say no, one time… When the sun had set upon Rosaria and the midwife was missing for the better part of a week, Lynnis wanted to go outside and see what she was doing. What Charlotte learned in her first fall here is that Rosarian winters are dedicated to ghosts. It’s an terrible omen to get outside at night when there is a cavalcade of ghosts running around the dusk-lit streets. Lynnis wanted to risk it. Charlotte couldn't accept it. The neko knew the risks. She saw it happen to a member of her clan. How the spirits tore through skin and bone and played with their flesh until the sun came up, and they were left, agonizing, traumatized, bleeding from every orifice imaginable, completely naked on the cold hard floor. There was quite an argument that night around the small hearth in Lynnis’s home… But finally, she conceded. She couldn’t risk the life within her life… And so they stayed here, nested against each other, while waiting for the ghosts' screams to stop. The next day, the midwife appeared as if nothing happened, calmly announcing to the couple that her grandchildren were in town announcing their marriage to foreign lords!

Of course, being pregnant, even during the last months, didn’t keep the girls from having a lot of steamy nights. More than once did the neighbors complain about the noise late at night. In the dead of night, sometimes, through the moaning murmurs of the night of the ghosts, some could hear.. a different kind of moans. Charlotte crying in agony and pleasure, her screams buried under a pillow as the soft claps of flesh banging against each other resonated in the bedroom. Lynnis’s ruts this winter were strong enough to make a widow blush. They went at it for what felt like days at a time. In a kind of manic frenzy, the catgirl kept impregnating the human, again and again and again and once again. The desire only grew as the pheromones kept stacking up under their skin, releasing in a burst whenever Lynnis came deep inside Charlotte’s ass. Every time she felt the same deep pleasure burning inside of her now beatified with the feeling of life forming and glowing inside her belly.

And then, the twins were born. Charlotte was the first to give birth. As much as the young mothers wanted the children to come into this world at the same time, the process was a bit more finicky than that… Aoi, sweet like the sky, their first daughter. Lynnis kissed her forehead and laid her in the arms of Charlotte… She then went into labor just about a few hours after, while still basking in the afterglow of her daughter’s birth. Lynnis’s childbirth was a lot more complicated than Charlotte’s. It turned out that their hope for a twinning wasn’t for naught, as she did bring two beautiful babies into this world. Haru the boy that screamed almost immediately with a deafening roar, tiger stripes flowing around his small body… And Toru, the girl. Much more reserved, she had to be cared for deeply by the nurses to take her first breath, nestled with her long tail wrapped around her waist. If Haru and Toru had every trait of neko newborns, Aoi was human… At least at first glance. She had a slight stub at the back of her midsection, barely noticeable even if you knew where to look for a tail. Nonetheless, three children born on the same day from two wombs... The twins became triplets.

There is a crib, a bigger crib than expected, in the middle of the salon. Three small figures, nested closely against each other in the summer heat are draped in a thinner than silk cloth covering their fragile bodies. Lynnis had bought and installed an enchanted ceiling fan just for the occasion. Charlotte is knitting small socks for the winter to come in a rocking chair. Two pairs rest atop the table, already completed, that she uses for reference in her work. They’re not very good… One is almost always more stretchy and bigger than the other, but she does not care in the slightest. Lynnis shoots a rapid glance across the living room. The charm should have already faded by now, she thinks to herself. Usually, when a neko finds a mating partner suitable for their needs, the partner goes away as soon as the pregnancy is completed. Charlotte didn’t leave, though. Why? The human flashes her a big smile. Is she still under the spell? She feels uneasy. It’s one thing to exploit one’s sexual urges to bring forth heirs to her bloodline… It’s another to trap someone indefinitely in a life they don’t want. For the first time in the process, she felt a tinge of remorse? Just a pinch of salt in the back of her brain. Lynnis is still young by neko standards. They are expected to bear a lot of children from different partners. Older cat girls could have close to a hundred children in a lifetime. More than a social contract, it was even considered a biological imperative… Human breeding candidates are not expected to stick around… And yet, Charlotte’s still here. The cat girl approaches and sits across from her mating partner. The human stops her work. Time stays still for a few moments. Then she asks away.

“ Charlotte, it’s been about a year since we met. How come you’ve not yet left this place?

— Left..? What do you mean? ” She seems genuinely taken aback by the question. Like she doesn’t understand. Lynnis grows a bit more frightened.

“ But.. I mean. The spell ended. I.. We didn’t renew it.

— I don’t understand. Do you want me to leave?

— It’s what’s expected of you… It’s not like I want you to. But it’s what I expected.

— Well, if you don’t want me to leave, all’s well then, no?

— … Uh. All’s well, I guess. ” Now it’s Lynnis who’s completely taken aback. Whenever cat girls mate with humans, the end’s always a bit messy. The pheromones spell is maintained by physical intimacy, so in the sobering period after Childbirth, the charm usually breaks and reveals the artificial nature of the feelings the human harbored for about a year’s time. Every neko’s prepared by their mothers to endure these hard few days. Sometimes, the humans grow violent and they try to harm them or their children… Almost every cat person like Lynnis is trained to defend their offspring by shedding blood if necessary. Some of her teachers even argued that reproduction should be done between neko and never with a human, however painful that might be. It is extremely rare — although not unheard of — that a human stays with a neko and their progeny for longer than a few days.. Lynnis grew complacent with her own heart. The diversity of partners is supposed to help the community’s survival chances… And yet, she doesn’t feel the need to cast away Charlotte. As if she is herself entranced in a different kind of spell, she feels the slight warmth of the hearth inside their home.. A home to share with someone, not to inhabit in transit while you work to bring forth the next generation. “ So.. Will you stay with me?

— Of course, sweetheart. ♥ ” She resumes knitting. Something about the sheer kindness in her eyes breaks Lynnis’s will to fight. She can’t do it… So she succumbs herself to a different kind of spell.. And she feels a new fire grow inside of her, ironically, not too dissimilar to the one she lit in Charlotte’s. In a lovely trap, filled with love and sunlight, they bask in each other for a long time. One day at a time.