Intermission: Fan Mail (III), Part 1

Andy sat beneath a coconut tree at the far end of the beach, five envelopes in his lap, the sand cool under his feet. Down the coast, he could hear laughter from the aftermath of the "Olympics," now reduced to Sam and Riley trying to teach Chloe how to surf on a pool floatie. None of the girls had pressed him to read the letters out loud; they’d just scattered, quietly, after Mildred’s delivery, to read their own.

He picked the first envelope. The paper was thick, crisp, solemnly sealed. He slit it open with his thumb, and a folded letter fell out, heavy as a thesis. The handwriting was sharp and precise, as if typeset and then hand-copied by a robot.

Andy,
I hope this letter finds you well. Nice to hear from you again. For once, I am ahead of you in this timey-whimey interdimensional nonsense. Our last challenge was about five years ago by our perspective. We’ve settled into our new world well enough. Life is still busy. I have a Queendom to run, seven wives (and several more live-in girlfriends) to take care of, and a frankly ridiculous number of children that I adore. I am pretty sure I am a great-grandmother already (it’s hard to track my wasp prodigy).

He paused at "great-grandmother," letting it sink in that somewhere, a post-human version of a former Harem Hotel Master was populating an entire parallel planet with her own half-wasp, half-sea elf descendants. He found he was struggling with the mental image.

I know your season is all lo-fi island vibes and you probably haven’t watched my time on my set, but it might help to watch the last bits. May help you start to think about what life after The HH may look like; the Cruise season Daphne grew up on may also be helpful in that regard. Now that I am free of my season, I actually have gotten to watch your season properly. Seriously, half the time you assumed I saw something previously, I had no idea what happened and would have to find it. I got a lifetime premium subscription to Harem Hotel Hereafter as part of my exit. Way too many of my evenings devolve to watching an episode or two of some season or another before retiring to evening bedroom activities.

Andy smiled at Harper’s writing, talking about "evening bedroom activities" with the same gravitas as running a Queendom. He read on.

I certainly experienced the harem growth thing. I started with 6 and am up to 12. Honestly, Josie’s Pack Tactics transformation (even with my edits) added more harem companions than the machinations of the show. Please encourage yours to veto a transformation like that if Arabella pulls that bit of brokenness out. Might be cat allergy transformation bias, but Myra is a cinnamon roll that you must protect. Nice to see a not murderous fox-girl with a comprehensible accent.

Andy looked down the beach toward the palm grove, where Myra sat curled up with Marissa and Dawn, the fox-girl and bunny-girl's hair and tails and ears a tangle of animal logic and human confusion. He felt an involuntary smile.

Happy birthday. Birthdays are kind of weird for me. The faded human didn’t get birthday acknowledgments after his dad was institutionalized (I saw Marissa suggest I seek therapy for my time on the show; let’s say my distrust of the profession runs deep). Then elves here really only do the birthday thing as a decade celebration instead of a yearly one. I am sure mine will throw me a birthday party sooner or later. Doesn’t help that I share the day with a fluffle of bunny-daughters. I try to be a better Mom (sometimes technically Dad) for my kids than my human Mom was to me. All 44 of them, with 2 more on the way (not counting the mid triple digit wasp children count; man R-selection species “parenthood” still feels so weird).

Andy caught himself staring at the words “44 of them, with 2 more on the way,” and did the mental math. If Dawn really did get pregnant, and if it worked on rabbit logic, how many little buns would he be fielding in the next six months? The thought left him briefly lightheaded.

Speaking of having kids, Dinah and I have exchanged letters. I am glad that she is doing well down there. We’ve done some raids to clean up messes from my season’s original producer (Ms E is a replacement when he got bored of Beckie) and sent most of the eliminated that could not adapt to my new world over to the Garden. Some could adapt, happily; I am glad that a place exists to take care of those who can’t. I am dabbling at taking care of a few eliminated from other seasons myself. Eliminations are horrible, even when earned. You got one **** elimination left, if I recall. Try to cheat the system again; none of them earned it.

He read that line again, three times. If you could cheat the system, you owed it to the girls to at least try. He glanced at the shore. This better work, he thought to himself.

You may also want to ask Dinah to come up soon to give everyone a check-up. I know with my placental animal beastkin girls, their reproductive processes are the average of a human’s and the species they got features from. So, my bonny bunny Tina has 4 or 5 bunny-daughters after fertilizing one of Honey’s eggs after about 4 months (again, some of mine’s transformations are wacky). If that is the case for Dawn, you need to be prepared; if she’s already pregnant, she may start to show before your season is over. Claire and Myra may be in a similar situation (if my pattern holds for her, Claire would give birth to 3 to 4 kitten-children and Myra would give birth to 7ish fox children, both in about 6 months from conception). I can only speculate on how Erin’s reproductive cycle has changed. Considering how part of my failure with Dinah was due to dreading what would happen to our kids if she was eliminated while pregnant, it’s imperative you find out before it’s too late (if you can’t game your way out of saving them again).

Andy sat with that for a minute, thinking about the genetics of plant people, cat people, bunny people, and fox people. It was the kind of problem that would have made him laugh, if it hadn’t also made his skin crawl with responsibility.

Yeah, the all day dates are fun, if a little exhausting. Showing Scarlet around a facsimile of my human hometown, spending time on an alternate dimension Venusian space station with Mattie, and Daphne showing me around my elf-self’s home were highlights of my time. Hey, your companions actually want to spend time with you! It’s a good thing. Your situation could be like those poor, inevitably corrupted kids Levi and Rose where most of his/her harem actively avoids him/her. Your continued friendship is more than enough, but I’ll keep you in mind if I ever need some programming support. You have any experience with magical computerized security or telecommunications systems?

He did. And now, at last, he was glad he'd wasted his senior year in college writing encryption scripts for fun.

Forgive the sign off. While I think it’s a little silly, my wife Aelene wants me to maintain a level of formality befitting my station, even in these sorts of friendly correspondences. You know what they say: happy wife, happy life.
Regards,
Tyalangan, 48th Queen of the Copse-Wood Throne Ruler of Nimlith Grove

Andy set the letter in his lap. The breeze caught the edge of the page and flipped it shut, as if the universe was tidying up after the bombshell. He looked out at the water, half-expecting to see a yacht of bunny-wives and wasp children headed in for shore leave.

He wondered if Dawn knew. Maybe she did—maybe she’d already done the math. Maybe that was why she was so keen on having every moment count, or why she clung to Andy like he was the only solid thing left in the world.

The thought made him want to find her immediately, but he still had three more letters. He picked up the next envelope, a professional cream, the handwriting finer and more controlled. He scanned for a name—there was none—but inside, the tone was familiar.

Andy,

As much as I would have preferred it to stay secret, the cat is out of the bag. I am going to be hosting my own season. I signed the contract even before my season was over. I am in the middle of building my set in my (limited) free time right now. My family and my people here take priority, but I have a lot of magic and not a whole lot to do with it in my day-to-day. If you and yours want to help test out my set, you are welcome to come over.

My decision may seem like a betrayal. I figured I should at least justify my decision to you, as the only Master to show me kindness before the party. I will not lie, part of it was an attempt to appease Ms. E; she subtly offered to take things easier on us if I took at least this season on before we worked out a contract. However, the premise of said season was my primary driver.

First, you need to understand a few things about the multiverse. I explained a bit of it to Claire and I have a better grasp of it now. Every decision makes a new universe. So, the number of them is ever-increasing in an exponential rate. Laura, the Congressman, Jake, and you may very well end up in different universes even though you all came from the same one, simply because there will be hundreds of thousands of dimensions that could be “yours” by the time you leave the Hotel.

Andy ran a finger down the page. He remembered Claire’s late-night theories about "spinoffs" and "side timelines," but this was different. This wasn’t a metaphor; this was someone who’d seen the wiring behind the set and come back to explain it to the kids still stuck in the playpen.

The first major branch point for universes have to do with the weave, the source of magic. Some universes, like my home here, kept the weave intact and strong. Others have the weave slowly decay, magic fading away over time. My old dimension was one where the weave was intentionally rent apart. My old home was designed to seal away a cosmic threat, to isolate it from the rest of the multiverse in a manner where its ability to use magic to escape is denied.

What was torn is slowly, inevitably repairing. And, once the weave there is restored, the Lovecraftian horror will burst out of the core of the Earth, consume the minds of every living thing, and then attempt to escape into the wider multiverse. When we first met, I admonished you to turn the game to the good. Ms. E wants me to use the show to empower people from my old world to save the billions of lives there from said threat. And therefore stop a universe eater from wreaking havoc on the wider multiverse. How could I in good conscience refuse?

Despite this, I hope we can still be friends. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, ask and I will try to comply.

A different sign off this time, for I am writing in more of a private professional position. Don't tell Aelene.
Regards,
Tyalangan
Check out the upcoming new season, Harem Hotel: Woo the Girl, Save the World

Andy folded the letter with a slow, deliberate motion. Harper—Queen Tyalangan—was going to be a Host. The multiverse was real. And somewhere, a cosmic horror was about to devour billions. He felt dizzy, like the beach beneath him had tilted. He'd liked Harper, respected her intelligence and determination. Now she was recruiting contestants to save a world. His problems suddenly seemed laughably small.

The third envelope was thick, blue, and dusted with what looked like opalescent powder. Andy raised an eyebrow, then cracked it open. There was a small pop and an explosion of confetti and glitter, half of which shot directly into his face. He coughed, spat out a piece of gold foil shaped like a bunny, and blinked the world back into focus. In his hands was a giant novelty greeting card, the kind with too many pages and the cheap perfume scent of a chain drugstore aisle.

On the front, in a riot of marker and ink: Yo birthday boy!!!

Inside, in looping handwriting that ran out of space and climbed up the margins:

Your best girl wanted folk to send you letters wishing you well on making it around the sun another three hundred and sixty four times so I threw this together and had all the girls sign it except Laura. She says she's sending her own which will probably be all boring and stuff. Your birthday's gonna be lit! Sam will see to that if she has to arm wrestle Arabella into it. Hope to see you there and/or at the next game. Sam's promised I'm in!

Underneath, in a cascade of increasingly deranged signatures: Tracy Black, Stacy Black, Susan Wagner, Candy Henderson, Misty Dawn, Gabriella Escarra, Carla Wright, Kim Baker-Wright, Anna Rodriguez.

P.S. I asked Sally to send enough cake so everyone gets some, you probably will want to enjoy it as Andi though.

Andy stared at the message, mouth twitching between a laugh and a sigh. He had no idea how to feel about being addressed as "birthday boy" in a card that looked like it had been designed by Lisa Frank during a meth bender. He reread the note, marveling at the casual mention of his gender-swap form, then thought about how his life had come to a place where that was, apparently, the correct way to eat cake.

It was the most on-brand thing Andy had ever seen.

He looked up, eyes scanning the far end of the beach. Sam and Riley had managed to get Chloe standing on the floatie, but she was wobbling like a stack of jello, and every time Sam yelled “bend your knees!” Chloe giggled and did the exact opposite. Andy smiled, then set the card aside, watching the wind catch a fleck of confetti and send it spinning down the sand.

He picked up the fourth envelope, recognizing the seal, and opened it up. He smiled as he started reading.

Greeting again Andy.

I got a notice from your Sam about your upcoming birthday with a request for a letter. How she's managed to keep track of such in the hotel's mad time scheme I have no idea but she's a keeper. Anyways I hope you have a good birthday and enjoy the party. With any luck I will be there with my sister who would probably find a way to get there on her own if I didn't bring her and my own childhood besty to which I am now engaged to so you can meet her and see how special she is even if you can't have your own with you. I asked Shar for a bottle of her best mead, which she assures me can get even us drunk, as a present and she is sending along something for Andi as well. I hope to deliver these in person but if circumstances keep me away expect them in the mail.

Laura Black

He grinned at the mention of the mead. He and Laura had cracked open the bottle during the party, and he was fairly sure the Masters' Support Association wouldn't have been born without it. Most of the bottle had survived (unsurprisingly, after the hyper-gin debacle, no one except for himself and Laura had wanted to try), and Arabella had assured him that, considering the contents, the mead could stay open essentially forever. He'd get around to drinking more the next time Laura Black came by.

He turned to the fifth letter, which was on plain white paper, folded in quarters. The handwriting was tight, and almost aggressive in how it **** the words into narrow lines.

Hey Andy,

This letter is so confusing to write. Right now, I’m split in two, and I’m not getting everything from the party, because somehow it would affect the challenge my harem is currently going through, and is currently ongoing.

Anyway, Happy Birthday. I know Ellen got something for you and said it was from both of us, but I wanted to get you something myself properly. So first, let me start by giving you some advice that my other half might not have had the time to think through, not just as another Master but as a person who was a long-time audience member.

You need to share the achievement list with your harem pronto, and you are utterly underutilizing your gifts, especially Console and Co-author. Masters in general don’t have as much power as either of us has to shape the course of the show, and to fix the damage it causes. I’m not saying your uses of Co-author have been bad, exactly, just underwhelming. I totally get being reserved with Sam’s changes and not wanting to go overboard, having done something similar myself for one of my ladies. I just think you aren’t being creative enough with it; for instance, you could give literal superpowers to your ladies. You could give Myra back her eyesight or an alternative form of seeing things, like Daredevil. You could alter Riley’s past so she didn’t give premature birth, instead that she had a healthy baby. Those are just things I can think of in the short time I’ve been given to write this, with only a summary of your full season.

I think you are thinking of using it as a curse when, in truth, it is a monumental gift.

As for your Console, seriously, why aren’t you using Hint every single day? If nothing else to find more cheat codes? Arabella literally gave you a task to find them around the island, and you have yet to make an attempt at doing so, at least from what info I was given. Maybe make a scavenger hunt with your ladies, with a prize for anyone who discovers a cheat code hidden around the island. Like, say offering up the use of Co-Author, to modify them however they would like.

Sorry if it seems like I'm scolding you, I know you are doing your best. Anyway, I mentioned a gift, a real one, not just advice.

Andy blinked. He shook the letter, and a small slip of paper fluttered out, landing on his bare knee. It was a coupon printed on shimmering card stock that seemed to change colors as he tilted it in the light. VALID FOR ONE (1) TRANSFORMATION UPGRADE, it read in ornate lettering. Redeemable for any contestant. Non-transferable.

He ran his thumb over the embossed surface, mind immediately cycling through the women in his harem. He tucked the coupon carefully into his pocket. This reminded him he still had to pick his Gift upgrades, before the end of the round.

Good Luck and Goddess Speed,
Mark / Mary Garret
Master of Harem Hotel: Missed Encounters
P.S. Cassandra, once again, in our fan mail, added her own titles after our names, so if anyone mentions a weird or pompous title, please know it wasn’t our choice.

Andy set the letter on his knees and exhaled, long and slow. He stared out at the horizon, mind busy with the avalanche of unsolicited, but also not unwelcome, advice.

He imagined: telling the girls about the Achievement List, watching the reactions. He thought about Co-Author, the power he’d used mostly to fix or mitigate the damages of the Harem Hotel, and realized, with a little horror, that Mark didn’t understand the burden of that power.

Andy didn’t doubt that Mark already considered the question of consent when discussing Co-Author, but he also didn’t think the man had evaluated all the ramifications. Andy had spent some considerable time thinking about it, and how the paradox of so much power was that it could not be easily used. He could change Riley’s description, but not her son’s; if Andy changed his birth to a healthy one, he’d still be dead, and would have simply died of some other cause. And as he had mentioned to Myra, her blindness was mentioned multiple times in her description, requiring even more power than he had now to even consider correcting. He didn’t want to know what would happen if Myra’s description implied she both could and could not see. But, he knew, he could still perform a few tricks. He’d have to consider the implications, and Andy idly wondered if, when Mark mentioned having done something similar to one of his ladies, he had fully considered all the ramifications of his changes.

As for Console… Andy's fingers twitched, remembering how the Console felt when he'd used it before—that brief, disorienting sensation of being both player and game. He'd avoided using Hint daily because each time felt like cheating at life itself, cheapening whatever came after. And searching for cheat codes? He'd seen what happened when people got too much power too quickly on this island. He looked at his own hands. He had more power than he had ever thought he would wield. Real power, the power to change lives, permanently.

A memory of the moment he and Tracy had used cheat codes to accidentally glitch The HH. The memory of those visions, even the good ones, haunted him. Mark was right on one thing. He would need to consider more thoroughly how to use Console.

He looked down at the confetti, the letters, the grains of sand clinging to his arms. He was, for better or worse, at the center of a universe built out of choices he’d never planned to make. He was the one who had to decide what happened next.

He watched the waves break, thinking about the billions of possible worlds out there, each with its own version of him, each making different choices and different mistakes. He wondered if any of them had figured out what it meant to be happy. He wondered if that was even the point.

He closed the letters, stacked them together, and slid them under his thigh to keep the wind from taking them. He watched Chloe finally fall off the pool floatie, tumbling into the shallow water with a squeal, Sam and Riley cheering like mad from the shore. The sun was still buried in cloud, but the whole world felt slightly lighter than it had that morning.

He would have to talk to the girls, after the Challenge.

---

Claire sat in the shade of a sea-grape thicket, the sand still damp from last night’s rain, two envelopes balanced on her knees. She’d chosen this spot for its quiet: the way the leaves drowned out the noise from the far side of the resort, the way the ocean was reduced to a low, even rush. Through the branches, she could see Erin stretched out in a battered lawn chair, eyes closed, breasts bare and shoes still on her feet, as if seeking to draw whatever faint light could still filter through the cloud cover. Emi, down the beach, was digging a pit that might one day become a sandcastle, or maybe just a place to hide. Claire opened the first envelope. It was the color of dark wine, the flap sealed with a wax imprint of a spider. She peeled it open carefully, aware that the HH sometimes delighted in the dramatic. Something solid fell into her lap: a book, and a glass vial, stoppered tight and labeled in black ink. Claire held it up, then set it down next to her foot, alongside the book. The letter inside was folded with near-military precision. She unfolded it, smoothing the creases, and began to read.

Ms. Freeman,

Salutations. I prefer that the concept will not offend you, but, of the humanoids I have observed on the various seasons of the show, you are very likely the one most similar to my mindset. Many individuals in my past at law school and in the workforce proper found the idea of being akin to me distasteful. I understand if you do as well.

To help assist you in deciding, I have included a copy of Brigantyna Duskryn’s treatise on my species from my original dimension, translated into Common for your convenience. As the foremost huntress of my kind of her age, her text is quite accurate, if a little biased towards genocide.

Claire blinked. She opened the book at random, scanning the chapter titles: Chapter VI: Enervation Protocols; Chapter VII: Reproduction Manual. The preface contained a detailed chart of symptoms following injection of venom, and a clinical analysis of “human-Nehtaliante courtship behaviors.” She closed it. She would read it later. Maybe after she’d finished the letters. Maybe in the dark, when the world was quiet.

She returned to the letter.

I write to you for your assistance in an ever plaguing conundrum, namely, to understand my Mate better. Our relationship is stable and I am content in how it has developed, but my Mate often does things that I cannot seem to comprehend. The pheromone transformation I requested when I **** myself into her harem lets me put the sentiments behind those actions into words and sometimes lets me mimic those actions without thinking, but the concepts of those sentiments elude me.

I believe the philosopher Haddaway phrased the question succinctly: “What is love?” His subsequent musings imply that the process of love is painful. I do not detect pheromones indicating injury from my Mate when she says she loves me, so perhaps he did not understand what love is either? I do not get many popular cultural references.

In exchange for your valuable insights, I have also included a vial of my concentrated venom. The venom must be injected directly into the bloodstream for it to take effect: it causes severe neurological irritation and temporary paralysis in non-spider creatures. For spiders, the paralysis is permanent.

Claire glanced at the vial, now glowing pink in the filtered sun. She wondered if Arabella would allow it in the hotel, or if it would vanish overnight like every other thing that seemed too dangerous for humans to have.

I am also willing to offer my legal expertise for matters related to your season pro bono. I am quite good at parsing contracts. Thank you kindly for your support in this matter.
Honey [no legal last name], Esq.
Royal Barrister
Queendom of Nimlith Grove

Claire refolded the letter. She sat for a while, watching a single ant crawl up the side of the treatise, before nudging it gently away. She had no idea how to advise Honey on the subject of love. Her own logic on the topic was a tangle—half what she’d read, half what she’d felt, none of it especially neat. If anything, she was more likely to ask Honey for advice. But maybe she could help a little.

She reached for the second envelope. This one was scented: not a heavy, chemical stink, but the faint green of cut grass and something wild underneath. She opened it with more confidence, expecting at least one oddity, but only a folded letter and a small, cream-colored coupon slid out.

Hello Catgirl,
My name’s Flora, and I’m a liongirl myself. Apparently, that’s all the reason our hosts need for us to write to one another. We do share some other traits, though. Neither of us really gets other people sometimes. I’m a National Park ranger, literally, so I don’t have to deal with people that much. I was told you lost your voice right off the bat. That sucks, especially the inability to sing. My new girlfriend is bummed that she can’t sing properly, too, as she now has a heavy Scottish accent. It’s incredibly attractive, but she still won’t sing because her transformation messes with her words.

I’m going to offer a suggestion; feel free to ignore it, though, as I don’t care for unsolicited advice myself. See if you can upgrade your TF to allow you some level of vocalization. I heard Andy has the ability to make modifications to you; maybe have him make you telepathic. I say this not because I think you can’t communicate effectively through writing, generally, but what about when you have kids with Andy?Communicating with your children is important for them as well as you. Even if you can only make it so you can sing, that would be a huge improvement.

I’ve included a coupon from our gift catalogue to suppress a single TF for twenty-four hours. Use it how you see fit, but I thought it might be nice for you to be able to tell Andy ‘I love you’ out loud if only once. He might be able to feel your love, but sometimes hearing those words matters.

Purrs and pawsitivity,
Flora Sparrow, Santa-Claws

Claire stared at the letter for a long time. She read it twice, then three times, her eyes prickling with an odd, warm pressure. She ran her thumb over the coupon—embossed, with tiny paw prints along the edge—and tried to imagine what she would say, if she could say anything at all.

The words would probably come out wrong. She would say something too technical, or she’d ramble, or she’d get the tone all off and Andy would smile at her like he always did, patient, waiting for her to finish the thought. She thought about the time they’d kissed for the first time—how she’d nearly bitten him from nerves, how her heart had thundered with panic, how he’d only laughed and told her that she was perfect, and that perfection was allowed to be messy.

She wondered why no one else, except perhaps Andy and most of the other women in the harem, understood that she liked the silence. Perhaps, she acknowledged, it was something to do with how her mind worked. She could understand Flora's point about children, yes. In her notebook, she already had drawn up detailed plans on how to handle that situation, when it presented itself. She shrugged. It would not hurt to add the coupon as Rearing Children - Contingency Plan XIII. Flora seemed like a nice person. Claire would not want her to feel her gift or advice were not appreciated.

Claire set the letters on her lap and took out her notebook. She wrote, slow and careful, a list of every word she’d ever wanted to say to Andy. She filled two pages before she stopped. She knew even when she had had her voice, she would have probably stood in front of him and rattled off all these words, wondering why his attention might seem to wander. No, much better to just give him the list and let him read it at his leisure.

She pocketed the coupon. She would save it, maybe for a day when the world was ending, or maybe in a different way than intended. Maybe she’d never use it at all. But she appreciated the thought.

Claire packed the treatise, the venom, and the two letters back into her bag. She walked over to where Erin slept, toes digging into the cool sand. She lay down next to her, close but not touching, and listened to the sound of the other girl’s breathing—slow, even, unbothered. She watched a single seagull wheel above them, tracing the same circle again and again.

For a moment, Claire let herself believe that this was what love was: the persistence of simple things, the patience of waiting, the ability to hold onto words until the right time came.

She closed her eyes, and wondered if that was something she could share with Honey.

---

Sam balanced herself on a chunk of volcanic basalt at the waterline, the kind of jagged outcrop that looked like it was designed for anime dramatic monologues or, failing that, breakups. Spray licked her shins, chilling the sunburn she hadn't noticed accumulating during the beach games. She was alone out here, except for a distant silhouette in the dunes—probably Liesa, who'd left the sand melee for some "inspirational sketching."

Sam had three envelopes. She turned the first one over in her hands, eyeing the wax seal: a swirled impression of a dragon coiled around a coffee cup. There was a faint but definite scent to the letter, like if someone had ground up Starbucks gift cards, espresso beans, and the sweat of a gym bro who never skipped arm day.

She peeled back the seal with her thumbnail, and the envelope promptly detonated into a confetti blast of pearlescent glitter. This was less a metaphor than an actual, literal explosion—Sam sneezed twice as iridescent flecks coated her wrists, up her nose, and instantly made her, by her own estimation, eighty percent more "queer prom" than she'd been the previous moment. Three objects tumbled onto her lap: two credit-card-sized objects (shiny, holographic, with the words "Lunacoin GIFT" on the front and "Glitterdust Royal Treasurer" on the back, plus a very unnecessary hologram of a smug anime dragon), and two perfectly matched bookend statuettes, about five inches high. Each statuette was a chibi, big-eyed version of Sam and Liesa, rendered with the kind of feverish precision usually reserved for collectors’ editions of limited-run anime.

Sam’s miniature was sporting her blue hair, a tiny barista apron, and a three-finger salute that could only be interpreted as "kiss my ass." Liesa's was in a swirl of floral print, arms folded, mouth a stubborn smirk, with one foot perched on a paint can. Together, they'd bracket a shelf, or, failing that, serve as highly specific paperweights for a couple who couldn’t decide whose side of the bed was messier.

But there was a third, heavier box, which had tumbled into the sand and now sat blinking up at her in full glossy technicolor. It was a mint-in-box figurine, the high-end kind, with a window displaying the contents: a nearly foot-long, full-detail dragon, tail curled in a way that violated several building codes, eyes gleaming, holding a tiny jewel-studded scepter. The packaging included multiple face plates, poseable arms, and, if the bullet points on the side were to be believed, several "erotically swappable" tails.

Sam stared at the haul, then at the letter. She braced for weirdness, then unfolded it:

Andi and Sam,
Hello! It has been a while since I have last written to you, Sam, and a first time to write to you, Andi. I should probably start this with an apology. Not for what I was trying to do when last I wrote. Andi, your life would be better in all ways if you renounced your gross boyhood as MY MtF Goddess has done. I am, however, sorry for the method I went about trying to **** the issue. It was wrong of ME to try to magically compel you to embrace your sexy womanhood upon pain of ****. It nearly cost ME MY chance to be with MY MtF Goddess.

I am trying to be a nicer big, sexy dragon; I have been since MY sex bud Mattie pointed out the consequences of MY MtF Goddess embracing MY attitude would be. It’s hard, given just how deeply a selfish craving for more is set in MY bones. Even after all these years since MY season ended, I still end up edging for hours trying to write MY daily list of three nice things to do. By the way, you have any suggestions for ME? I still need to come up with one more today. I know your reply won’t reach ME for months, in all likelihood, but, hey, they may help when I get your reply. Thank you in advance.

Presents time. Real ones, too. First, for each of you, a Lunacoin gift card with my face on it! I loaded 50 silver on each of them. No default 20 silver gift card from the grocers for you. I assume you have Lunacoin in your home realm and your economy runs on gold coin like MINE does. 50 silver will get you about 40 large lattes or maybe 5 small black coffees. Enjoy and bask in MY majesty as you drink your coffee!

The other present comes from the Harem Hotel Merch store next door from the Lunacoin I got the gift cards from. Yes, Harem Hotel has retail stores in MY realm! MY MtF Goddess told me no giant anime statues, so I got you something more “reasonably sized.” For Sam, a set of bookend statuettes of Liesa and herself! I even splurged on the auto-adjusting version so that, once Sam gets the corgi-girl transformation MY MtF Goddess is petitioning for, her statuette won’t be out of date, even if that would make it more valuable in the end on the Harem Hotel Merch secondary market. For Andi, a poseable desk accent statue of ME, who has surely become your favorite girl from MY MtF Goddess’s season now that I have apologized! It comes with all these cool bits to customize the pose, like different face plates for different emotions (I really like how they captured MY horny face!), a tail you can swap to make it look like I am plowing MYSELF with MY own tail, and MY temporary when in girl mode wings! I autographed the box if you want to keep it in unopened mint condition! They got both MY normal girl mode and MY actual dragon mode on the image on the back, too! I especially like how they captured MY floating horns and spines; that is a nifty bit of magic for them to pull.

With that, I believe I have done two nice things today. I just need to come up with and do a third one.

Hashtag All Andi All The Time
Glitterdust, Royal Treasurer
Queendom of Nimlith Grove

Sam pinched the bridge of her nose and snorted. It was exactly the level of extra she'd expected from a magical dragon girl whose first act, as she recalled, had been trying to **** Andy to stay permanently in Andi-form through a cursed scroll. She would have to share this madness with Andy, though, if nothing else because this Glitterdust was one of Harper’s girlfriends, and Andy was friends with Harper.

Sam looked at the miniature bookends again. The Liesa statue, despite its big-headed chibi proportions, had the hair precisely right: little flyaway strands, even the braid that was her favorite style. She held both up to the sky, then pressed them together, so the tiny arms overlapped.

They clicked with a tiny magnet, which, Sam thought, probably counted as one of the three nice things for the day.

She wondered if she should give the dragon statue to Andy, or if it would be funnier to prank him by unboxing it, swapping the horny face onto it, and arranging it next to the coffee pot every morning until Andy noticed.

Sam pocketed the gift cards and repackaged the other stuff. She'd have to figure out if Liesa wanted the matching bookend, or if she'd pretend to hate it for a week before giving it a place of honor above her pillow.

The second letter was familiar, even before she slit it open: the smell of spice and smoke, the thick, off-white vellum, and the old-school penmanship that bordered on aggressive calligraphy. Shar didn't do subtle.

A ring fell out, bouncing off her palm and into the sand. It was identical to the one Sam already wore: silver, or white gold, and on the inside, an inscription in a language she couldn't read.

Sam read:

To Sam.

Congratulations on the contest and the party. Shame you couldn't draw the sword and cleave the columns, laying the Mildreds atop to waste. Would have been quite the sight, still you made an excellent accounting for yourself.

It also gratifies me to see you and your lady love growing ever closer. To help with that I have enclosed another ring. While you both wear these you will be able to feel the general emotions each other is feeling as well as those directed at each other. Be strong, my champion, the harem and your friend needs you.

Shar.

P.S. You might think of using that new transformation of yours to give each other the gift of larger breasts...

Sam rolled her eyes so hard she almost tipped off the rock. She slipped the ring onto her left hand, third finger, where she wore Shar’s previous ring, and immediately felt a weird tickle, like a mild static shock but not quite physical. The old ring went warm, then cool, then Sam felt a sudden wave of something that was definitely not her own emotion: a fluttery glee, followed by a surge of embarrassed affection, then an icy thread of annoyance, then—yes, definitely—glee again. Sam looked over her shoulder. Liesa, still on the dunes, had stopped pretending to sketch and was now flat-out staring at Sam, her arms wrapped tight around her knees.

Sam gave a slow, exaggerated wave. Liesa, caught, looked down, and the embarrassment made the ring flare hot again. Sam grinned, teeth sharp, and turned her attention to the P.S.

You might think of using that new transformation of yours to give each other the gift of larger breasts...

Sam looked down at her own chest, then at her hands, then up at the horizon. It was like being negged by a fairy godmother with a breast obsession. She pictured Liesa, now, with an even more attention-commanding pair—Sam had to forcibly stifle a cackle, because she could feel Liesa's reaction from thirty yards away.

The third envelope was blue, matte, and shimmered in the sun like a soft-shelled crab. No seal, just a quick strip of tape, and inside, the letter was written on normal paper, which somehow made it feel more illicit.

A pack of gummies fell out—Sam blinked. The label on the pouch, in black marker, read GUMMY TONGUES, and the logo was a cartoon tongue sticking out, waggling, from a pair of glossy lips. She snorted, then read the letter:

Greetings to my fellow blue-haired Samantha,

You do God’s work, providing caffeine and now **** to those in need. Quick introduction: My name’s Samantha Irving, a lieutenant in the US Navy and more recently a dragon. Yes, an actual dragon, not simply a woman with wings and horns. Luckily, I can shapeshift to be mostly human.

From the info I’ve been given about you, I must congratulate you both for keeping Andy from collapsing into a blubbering mess, and for finding love on a crazy show like this. Liesa’s quite the catch, I might add.
Something I would suggest doing with Liesa is establishing boundaries regarding what either of you can do with other people. I know you might be thinking I’m not interested in making out with or being intimate with anyone else here, but that might not matter. Someone could easily get a transformation that could screw with one or both of your heads. It was something Mark suggested to everyone in my season, since essentially everyone is dating someone besides Mark here.

I have included a pack of Gummy Tongues. They are a magical candy that I’ve been told makes lesbian sex far more enjoyable. Maybe Arabella will let you buy more when you run out, if you enjoy them.

Good Luck,
Lieutenant Samantha Irving
Azure Dragon of the Bottomless Depths

Sam took out a gummy tongue. It was exactly what it said on the label: pink, tongue-shaped, with a granular sugar coating and a scent like blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers. The surface was slick, and just holding it made her think of sex, which was probably the point.

She idly wondered why she got all the dragon mail. Was the universe trying to tell her something?

She pocketed the candies, deciding that these were absolutely going to be shared with Liesa at the earliest possible moment.

Sam skimmed the last lines of the letter, then re-read the advice about "establishing boundaries." She mulled it over, then decided that maybe, just maybe, she and Liesa should actually talk about it. The HH had made her feel like every night was a speedrun, but that didn't mean you could skip the hard parts. Besides, she liked knowing that someone, even a dragon, thought her relationship was worth preserving.

---

Liesa sat cross-legged on the farthest spit of sand, her back to the wind and her eyes fixed on the black line of basalt where Sam perched, blue hair a corona in the sea haze. She'd picked this distance deliberately: near enough to track Sam’s every movement, far enough that neither would be tempted to fill the silence with conversation. It was the sort of isolation that made space for other voices.

She had two letters. One was weighty, sealed with a wax stamp in a dragon’s profile. The other was a scroll, tied with a blue-and-gold ribbon, the edges flecked with gilt. Liesa hesitated. She’d meant to save the scroll for last, but the color of the ribbon—almost the same as Andy’s eyes—kept pulling at her, daring her to unravel it.

She picked the dragon letter first, breaking the seal with a practiced thumb. A ring fell into her palm, silver and slick as mercury, identical to the one she already wore on her left ring finger. This new ring buzzed, gentle and constant, the thrum of a cat purring against the heel of her hand.

She read:

To Liesa.

Thank you for your efforts in throwing such an excellent party, my girls quite enjoyed it and meeting you. It warms my heart to see you growing and able to accept that you are loved and worthy of that love. To help, I have sent you and Sam matching rings, yet again. This pair will allow you to feel what Sam feels for you, and her your feelings as well. I pray that her love resonating deep in your own heart makes you happy. Also they will give you a sense of each other's general emotions. When she is sad, you will know to cheer her up. When she is lonely, you will know to hold her hand.

Shar.

Liesa stared at the page, lips pressed thin. She ran a thumb over the ring, considering. The first ring had been a promise—a tether to a version of herself that was capable of love. This second was different. It was, in its way, a test: could she bear the unfiltered voltage of someone else’s feelings?

She slid the ring on her left ring finger. The instant it touched skin, she felt the braid: the two metals curled together, a double helix, the new loop winding seamlessly into the old. There was a flash of vertigo, and then—

A flutter, not in her hand, but in her chest: anticipation, relief, and a bright blue filament of joy that did not belong to her.

She looked up the beach and caught Sam staring at her, a lopsided grin on her face, waving with exaggerated flourish. The connection flared, a vivid spike, and Liesa felt a burst of fondness—a warm, embarrassing delight that made her want to laugh, or cry, or maybe run straight into Sam’s arms and not explain a thing.

Liesa looked down, hiding her smile. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her hand to her chest to hold the emotion in place.

She wondered if Sam felt it too.

She set the letter down, careful not to let the wind catch it. She opened the next envelope, and a tied scroll fell out. She caught it before it touched the water, setting it aside as she pulled out the actual letter from the envelope. To her surprise and delight, the letter was in Flemish.

She began to read, lips moving in silence as the Flemish filled her head:

Hé, jij sexy ding,

Mijn naam is Laura. Liesa, laat me je dit nu zeggen: je hoeft je nergens voor te schamen over wat je hebt gedaan om voor je **** te zorgen. Hoor je me? NERGENS. Als je je slecht voelt, laat me dit dan zeggen: Ik vergeef je. Zo, je hebt goddelijke vergeving ontvangen. Ik moet misschien vermelden dat ik nu een letterlijke godin van seks en verlangen ben, naast andere dingen.

Denk aan Aphrodite, en dat is niet omdat ik mezelf belangrijk vind. Ik kreeg letterlijk een transformatie die zei dat ik het grootste deel van haar takenpakket dek, en ik heb zelfs contact met haar gehad. Maar zelfs als ik geen godin was, heb je nog steeds geen vergeving nodig. Geniet van wat je hebt en laat je verleden je relatie met Andy of Sam niet vergiftigen. Nu heb ik wat magie gekregen en ik zou je heel graag willen helpen door een spreuk over je uit te spreken, maar Cassandra, mijn Host, heeft me verteld dat dit niet mag. In plaats daarvan heb ik een perkament gemaakt van de spreuk die ik voor je wilde uitspreken, zodat je hem zelf kunt gebruiken.

Het heet Noodlottige Ontmoeting (Fateful Encounter), spreek hem uit over iemand (bedoeld voor jezelf), en het zal ervoor zorgen dat er een toevallige ontmoeting plaatsvindt voor het doelwit, waardoor ze liefde kunnen vinden of laten groeien. Eerlijk gezegd is het een van mijn favoriete spreuken, omdat het niets forceert; het geeft gewoon een duwtje, zodat alle juiste puzzelstukjes op hun plaats vallen voor de ontmoeting.

Veel geluk,
Laura Elliot,
Godin van Verlangen

She studied the letter for a moment.

Hey there, you sexy thing,

My name’s Laura. Liesa, let me tell you this now, you have nothing to be ashamed of for what you did to take care of your family. Hear me? NOTHING. If you feel bad, let me say this: I forgive you. There, you have received divine forgiveness. I guess I should mention I am now a literal goddess of sex and desire, among other things. Think Aphrodite, and that isn’t me with a big head. I literally got a transformation saying that I cover most of her portfolio, and I have even had contact with her. Even if I weren’t a goddess, though, you still don’t need forgiveness. Enjoy what you have and don’t let your past poison your relationship with Andy or Sam. Now, I’ve been granted some magic and would love to help you out by casting a spell on you, but I was told by Cassandra, my Host, that I can’t. Instead, I have produced a scroll of the spell I wanted to cast for you to use on yourself. It’s called Fateful Encounter, cast it on someone (meant to be yourself), and it will cause a chance encounter to occur for the target that can let them find or grow love. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite spells since it doesn’t actually **** anything; it just nudges things so all the right pieces are in place for the encounter to happen.

Good luck,
Laura Elliot,
Goddess of Desire

Liesa laughed, a real, joyful noise that startled a seagull into flight. Forgiveness. She’d told herself a thousand times that what she’d done was necessary, that Belgium would have eaten her alive if she’d stayed, that no one else could have survived it better. She’d spent entire years convincing herself she didn’t deserve the shame. And yet, for the first three rounds of this show, every time Andy or Sam looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the world, it felt like a lie that needed to be paid for.

But now, something had changed. Sam and Andy had shown her that they loved her, even at her ugliest. That what she had had to do did not define her. Dawn and Norah had forgiven her. And Liesa felt changed, as if she could finally shed the skin she’d been wearing for so long. Her hands found her sketch. This was what the drawing was about, today. She wanted to leave something beautiful behind, if anything happened. Something true.

She looked at the spell scroll, now sitting atop the letter. The instructions were simple: Fateful Encounter. Use it on yourself, and somewhere in the near future, love would find a way.

She pictured herself as a child, hands red with paint, clutching at her mother’s skirt. She pictured herself at eighteen, standing over her mother’s bed, promising to never, ever let her down. She pictured Andy’s face, tired and raw, the last time she’d seen him in person before the HH.

She looked up the beach again. Sam was still there, watching, the emotion in the ring now a cocktail of patience and hope, spiked with just enough mischief to make the waiting bearable.

Liesa rolled the scroll between her hands, uncertain if she wanted to use it or simply keep it, forever, as proof that someone had forgiven her, that maybe she was worth loving, not just as a body but as a soul with sharp corners and ugly history.

She squeezed the rings—both of them, now braided tight—and focused on the feeling. The embarrassment, the delight, the longing. The pure, impossible hope.

She didn’t move. She didn’t have to. Sam, across the beach, sat perfectly still, one hand raised in a salute, the other pressed over her own heart.

The rings vibrated, and for a moment, Liesa felt like the whole world was tuned to the same frequency: hers, and Sam’s, and Andy’s, too.

She closed her eyes and breathed, in and out, as the tide curled closer and the wind spun the blue-and-gold ribbon around her wrist. She thought about using the spell, about letting herself be nudged into something new and beautiful. She thought about what it might mean to let go of the past, to let forgiveness settle into her bones.

She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to. But she knew, for the first time in years, that she had something that belonged to her, something pure.

The rings pulsed, and across the sand, Sam smiled at her, wide and bright, and everything felt possible.