Out in the courtyard, Golondrina is trapped under a winged beast

Morgan raises her head, her chin glistening with your cunt juice, and looks round at the door to your little shoe-box of a dormitory room.

"Gahhhhh!" you groan. "What NOW?"

For all your early success as a Happy Bunny here at House Beavertail, your luck has been At Best Middling at the thing that happy bunnies are known for -- humping!

You roll to the side and sit up, plant your bare feet on the bedside rug, being careful not to step on the nightmare-eater sigils, and take wand in hand. All else is bare, from toes through tush past breasts to blonde bed-head.

"Careful, Fay!" Morgan says.

It's turnabout time, with yourself playing Tess and Morgan playing yourself as sleeve-clutching cautioner, without actually having any sleeves. Love expressed as fear always irritates you. You manage to stifle the words you're thinking, Stop being my mother.

Morgan means well. She loves. She loves you.

"Fine!" you snap.

You trace the knotted stars of a personal ward round about you. Morgan calms. That helps you focus, the vibrating blue traceries following the tip of your wand. Purge or no purge, she's still in your head. Focus. Focus.

Custom Move: personal ward. Roll +CUNNING(+2).

• On a 10+, take +1 Forward and also the 7+ result.
• On 7+, take +1 Forward to resolve the consequences of a Miss or a Complicated Success on your next Move.
• On a Miss, your hesitation means trouble has come to find you. Roll +BRAVERY(-1) to GET OUT OF DANGER.

⚄⚁ + 2 = 9.

Take +1 Forward to resolve the consequences of a Miss or a 7-9 related to whatever's looming outside your door.

The personal ward ties off with a twist and a snap, forming a taut barrier defending your tender toesies and bare buns and boobies from ill intent and imp spit. You are out of uniform, to be sure, but Morgan did half of her magic sky-clad, and it suits you just as well if not better.

You raise your wand and look back at Morgan. She's back in her Happy Bunny robes of gold-trimmed brown, her black broomstraw hair hopeless as usual, but her wand thrumming eagerly.

Girl could do more with that wand, but she's more a fingers-and-tongue trad...

There's a crash and a yelp somewhere outside. Focus.

You yank the door open, following the commotion round a corner out to one of Beavertail's courtyards. Flat on her back and struggling under the limbs of a great winged beast is Golondrina Redmoor. Morgan shrieks. The beast swings its head around.

Your feelings fade away, crammed into a box and thrust to the back of your mind, to rave away unheard. Your pulse slows. Your mind is cold electricity. Golondrina. Safe. How?

"Fuck," you mumble, but there's no bite in it. Morgan is saying something but you don't make out any words.

It's a dragon. Here HOW. No, not a dragon. Two legs, two wings, a venomous stinger for a tail. A wyvern.

And wyverns are the stupidest thing with two wings and scales. Stubborn, too. Unless... Aha. It's sporting a grand, throbbing erection between its legs. Your lips twitch into a narrow smile. Good thing you didn't sleep through that lecture.

"Distract it a second, Morgan," you say. "This calls for an illusion."

Morgan dances off to one side, waves her arms and shrieks again. The wyvern doesn't take its claws off Golondrina, but it looks toward Morgan, and you cast your spell.

Roll +CUNNING(+2) to CAST A SPELL. You're conjuring an illusionary wyvern to distract the beast away from Golondrina.

⚄⚃ + 2 = 11

On a 10+, your spell succeeds with intended effect.

Swooping over the roof of House Beavertail, twittering out her love call, comes the girl wyvern of this one's dreams. Kiting in like a great goose, she lands with a thumping knee bend at a far corner of the exercise yard.

The original fearsome beast is still holding fast to Golondrina with both clawed feet. There's some trumpeting and squawking, but you have this silly lizard's number. With that bedpost-sized, throbbing penis, he must have seized upon Golondrina as a gift to his would-be intended, but Lolo was just too damned tough to go along with the program.

Wyvern Dream Girl doesn't care for gifts. She turns her back and lifts her tail. He trumpets and flaps his wings. She crouches against a shed in the corner of the courtyard and gives him another come-hither wave with her tail.

Bawling in lust, the wyvern un-claws and scampers forward. Golondrina jerks as the creature uses her for the starting blocks of his very short race. Focus. Hold his attention. Morgan will help Lolo.

You direct with your wand, keeping the wyvern deluded into thinking he's fucking the most wonderful mate he's ever laid his lizardy length into. Not much delicacy needed from you, but timing. Responsiveness. Keeping his attention on plunging that great scaly spear into the seeming of a sweet sheath, not letting him realize that his wonderful lady is an illusion wrapped round a dull little shed.

How long do wyverns take to fuck? This one's more than a one-minute monster, but if his climax breaks the illusion, you may have to beat a hasty retreat. Come on, Morgan, come on...

But it's Miss Hemstitch who makes a peremptory appearance. Something disturbs your personal ward, and there she is, standing next to you.

"Miss Applebum," the Tutor says.

"I'm sorry, Miss Hemstitch," you say. "First thing I could think of to get him off Golondrina. Illusionary girlfriend." You continue to direct the illusion to keep the wyvern busy.

"Unorthodox. Effective," Miss Hemstitch says. "I shall follow." She raises her wand and incants CLIMACTICUS.

Shit! Exactly what you were trying to avoid, or at least put off.

The wyvern's wings flap madly, its clawed feet dig gouges into the courtyard, and it thrusts mightily forward with a great trumpeting cry. With a loud crack, the roof of the shed gives way and the wyvern flops face-first into the half-collapsed building. It struggles, bleating, its wings snagged in the roof, its legs kicking feebly after inseminating a shed with a great load of wyvern seed.

You feel a jolt from your own pleasure button, a little splash-back from the Tutor's spell. Your wand clatters to the courtyard. Bye bye illusionary girlfriend, poof! Bye bye personal ward!

Miss Hemstitch nods and incants, SOMNUS.

Sleepy time for wyverns.

"Miss Applebum, you appear a bit shaken," Miss Hemstitch says.

"Yes." The icy electric calm has fled, leaving you trembling. "But Golondrina. Miss Redmoor...EEK!"

Lolo wraps you up in one of her rib-popping embraces, smearing your bare skin with blood seeping from wyvern claw perforations. She's doing well for someone who just had a huge beast stomping and clawing on them. You're sure that in Lolo's place, you'd have ten broken ribs, a deep, envenomed tail-stab, and be clutched in the wyvern's claws, air parcel express to Princess Wyvern's nest to be eaten alive. Eaten alive in a terrible and painful way that would be no fun at all.

"You saved me, Fay!" Lolo says, lifting you from the ground and twirling you around. "Ow!" Golondrina sets you down abruptly, the pebbles of the courtyard digging into your bare soles.

"Miss Redmoor, please stand quiet," Miss Hemstitch says. "Fay, Morgan, take her to the Nurse. I need to bring the Warden here. Ah, Miss Applebum?"

You pause and look back.

"Well done," Miss Hemstitch says. "We shall talk later." She nods in dismissal.

The Tutor brings up an empty palm and scribbles a little sigil with a fingertip from the other hand. She proceeds to have a conversation that makes no sound, but the way she glares into her hand suggests that she is Not In The Least Pleased.

Miss Wormwood looks about to make some sarcastic remark about your nakedness, but once she sees the deep claw wounds in Golondrina's shoulders, chest, and legs, she is all business. You end up standing in the corner forgotten as the Nurse calls on Morgan -- Nurse's pet and sex toy during Morgan's first year -- to assist with Golondrina.

Eventually the drafts are too much for you and you stuff yourself into a drab shapeless Infirmary gown.

When the Nurse and Morgan are through patching up Golondrina, Miss Wormwood takes Morgan by the hand and leads her off, citing the need for an urgent cleansing bath.

You bite your lip. Morgan's going to come back with snakebites all over her again, loopy after Miss Wormwood injects her veins full of paralytic and aphrodisiac venom courtesy of her head full of snakes. You're not sure if Morgan loves being Miss Wormwood's object of desire, or whether Morgan hates telling the Nurse no.

No, actually, you are sure. You share enough with Morgan, mind to mind, to know that Nurse creeps her out, but that the sex is addictively good for both of them, kinky and weird as hell, and that Morgan likes making Miss Wormwood happy. Happy. Miss Wormwood. If anyone has seen that, it's Morgan Honeysuckle Sunshine Woodbine, the soppiest of soppy witches you've ever met.

Ever loved. Love ever.

"Fay?" Golondrina says.

You tilt your chin up to meet her eyes.

"Are you feeling bad?" she asks.

You look at her but you have no words that are kind, true, and clear. "Spent," you temporize.

"That's not the look I saw on your face," she says. She brushes back a tress of her copper-bright hair.

"It's not..." you begin. But no words follow those. "Anyway."

"You know I love you too, as much as Morgan," she says.

"Lolo," you say. "Lolo."

"Why are you crying?" Golondrina asks.

"I, I, I, ah, I don't know," you say. More like don't know the words.

"Stay with me," she says. "I don't know if Nurse will let you, or if I can go. Stay with me now."

She cradles you gently, her arms pulsing dragon heat at you.

A giggle bubbles up from inside. Maybe the wyvern wanted Lolo as a girlfriend, rather than a bloody morsel. It wasn't very stubborn about that, so you're probably just silly.

"I love you, Fay," Golondrina says. "So brave and beautiful."

Not brave, but you're not going to argue. Words don't feel good. Lolo feels good. You nod off to sleep in Golondrina's arms.

You have 4 XP.

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

You know the Forbidden Spell, LUST.

Miss Hemstitch wants to talk to you sometime later. Maybe about being the hero of the day.