Everybody Loves Golondrina

Your dreams take wing. Sleeping with your head in Golondrina's lap, cuddled in her arms, you fly the mountain airs on your own wings, watching your kin catching the rising air, diving, swooping, exhilarated by the speed and strength of being part of the sky. You reach the top of an updraft, float at the top for a moment, then twitch your wings and fold them as you tip forward into a dive. So fast, the rushing air, yet it feels like you're hardly moving until the dark evergreens are close enough to count needles. Another twitch and your wings catch lift, straining to turn you upward. The treetops flicker past, frighteningly close as the land rises ahead of you. Ravens croak in alarm as your wake blows them from their perches. You rise, slowing as you trade away speed for height to clear the top of the ridge.

A treetop catches your wing, spinning you round and sending you tumbling to the...

"AH!" you awake with a startled cry. Your breaths are fast and shallow. But you're still lying down, looking up at Golondrina's face with your head in her warm lap. She smiles and pats you on the top of your head.

"Are you alright, Fay?" Lolo says.

Fey wildling by birth, coppery-haired weredragon, sweet by nature, and cloistered, too busy making love to books to have even made a start with people. Until you and Morgan took it upon yourselves to tease this pathetic giraffe, and she turned it right around on you without trying.

"Fay, you're crying, what's wrong?"

"I love you, you, ah, you-you-you-you, ah, fuck, YOU."

Lolo Dragoncunt has stolen your tongue along with your heart. Morgan is a part of you, your darkling mirror, your souls entwined. Golondrina has torn a new hole and let more light in.

Golondrina blinks. "Are you... Should I get the Nurse?"

Your thoughts, those fluttering parakeets in a rattled cage, perch and start talking sense again.

"Has Morgan been back?" you ask.

"No?" Lolo says. "I mean, they were off for a wash, after bandaging me."

"Don't get the Nurse. She and Morgan are fucking."

"Oh."

"Morgan, light of our lives, has the mystical power for making Miss Wormwood, bitter old Gorgon that she is, for making Miss Wormwood happy," you explain.

"Oh."

"Morgan likes making people happy." You take a deep breath, looking up into Lolo's face as she looks down at you. "Miss Wormwood can go for months, getting momentary jollies out of biting students upon the buttocks -- purely business! -- and occasionally picking a bruised-up Broom Polo player and amusing herself by biting them full of venom and watching the dear young thing, muscles locked, limbs trembling uncontrollably, fighting to breathe while their piss hole cannons out spunk until they black out. Gets her jollies like that without actually caring about being happy, but when she remembers, Morgan is her girl. Morgan makes her happy."

Golondrina's face goes through several expressions, then evens out.

"Oh," she says.

She nods. You nod back.

"All true," you say.

"Oh my," Lolo adds.

"So we shouldn't bother Miss Wormwood," you say. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Lolo says.

She's looking remarkably good for someone who was just stomped and clawed by a huge horny stupid oaf of a wyvern.

"How much better?" you say, "Mmmm?" You bat your eyelashes at her.

"Um, alright I guess, I mean, nothing's broken, no deep slashes," Golondrina says. "What do you mean?"

Being fine-haired and just on the blue-eyed, platinum-haired side of albino has its disadvantages when it comes to batting eyelashes. Using a come-hither voice on Witch Cram School Girl was a pure miss. Maybe you need to take the bull, or rather, the dragoness by her horns.

You raise one hand and place a finger upon Lolo's forehead. She radiates heat from there, as she does from all over. The Chilly Tarn barely slowed her down. She matches the gesture, putting her hot little fingertip upon your third eye or whatever that swirl in the aura is properly called.

TAKE ME OUT OF HERE, GET US A ROOM, AND FUCK ME, you send silently.

Lolo's mouth curls up in amusement. There's a sparkle in her eyes. Her giggle-smile widens to a grin. She shakes off your finger from her forehead, cradles your head with one hand and leans down toward you, lips parted and puckered out.

Roll +DILIGENCE(+0) to ENCOUNTER Golondrina and see if perchance she might be in the mood for love.

⚁⚀ + 0 = 3, Miss.

There's a rattle of curtain rings as Miss Wormwood sweeps back into the room, her steel-wire-and-snakeskin limbs propelling her forward with great alacrity. There's a little smear of blood on her lower lip and chin.

Lolo looks up and the moment is lost.

"Miss Redmoor, you will be staying over," the Nurse tells Lolo. "Your physique is remarkable, but we cannot risk a delayed reaction with these wounds." The Nurse turns to you. "Miss Applebum, go get some rest."

Miss Wormwood reaches down, grasping your shoulder with inhuman strength, and sits you up straight.

"Morgan?" you ask the Nurse. But you know the answer.

"Miss Woodbine is resting, and she will be along presently," the Nurse says.

Fucked to dreamy exhaustion and high out of her mind on aphrodisiac venom. At least someone is happy.

You sigh. A girl just wants to get a room and have you do her, is that too much to ask? After that little nap, Cook had left you hungry for more, much more, but Fortune had pulled the rug out from under you twice running, condemning you to be La Belle Fille qu'Elle ne Jouît or some such.

Miss Wormwood adds, "And return the smock to the laundry."

You'd arrived naked, reeking of Cook's cunt juice from your afternoon-long tumble, fear-sweat from the battle, and a bit of your own love lotion spread about your mound and upper thighs from Morgan's licking, interrupted by the ruckus out in the courtyard.

But no scholar's robes. Thus the smock.

"Yes, Miss Wormwood," you say, and tiptoe barefoot toward the door. Tiptoeing compensates a bit for being the short little cream puff in a place full of beanpoles (Morgan), amazons (Lolo), and scarecrows (Nurse).

When your hand touches the door, Miss Wormwood says, "Take care, Fay."

You startle, your head swiveling round over your shoulder. It looks like completely genuine concern. You feel that little twinge at the bridge of your nose again, and two fat tears roll straight down your cheeks.

"Thank you, Miss Wormwood, I will," you say.

Bless you, Morgan, you're turning Miss Wormwood into an actual human being.

Bath, bath, bath, bath, bath. No one will notice if you're crying in the baths.

Oh, Brave New Happy Bunny, what now?

Tess. Maybe Tess is up for a bath.

You have 4 XP.

You have Ambition +2, Bravery -1, Cunning +2, Diligence +0, and 4 XP.
Your FRIEND is Morgan Woodbine, true love, subversively soppy romantic hedge-witch.

You know the Forbidden Spell, LUST.

Miss Hemstitch wants to talk to you sometime later.

Roll +DILIGENCE(+0) to ENCOUNTER Tess Lectura and see if she's up for a bath.

⚄⚂ + 0 = 8.

When you ENCOUNTER Tess, on a 7-9, she's willing to go along with you to the baths, provided you make a trade, do her a favor, or convince her in character. Maybe she insists on a return to the secret guest apartment. Or ("I am a prying bitch.") she wants juicy details about your encounter with Cook or your illusion work against the wyvern.