You have a nice time with Tess. Learn secrets, use STAMINA

Tess grabs you under your shoulders and leans backward, pulling you atop her as she falls back onto her bed with an "oof!" and a giggle. Her cap of carrot-orange hair ripples as her head hits the pillow. Her round glasses take a little bounce and land back on the bridge of her nose.

"Glasses?" you say, offering to take them off so they don't detract from the impending face mashing session.

Tess laughs. "I'm pretty short-sighted, but I can see fine at nose-to-nose distances," she says. "Let me." She puts a fingertip to one hinge of her glasses, rubs a double circle, and her glasses twist, shrink, and spool into a ring upon her finger.

"Transformations, yah," you say.

"Yah. Whiptail wanted me to stay to be Little Miss Transformer for Minerval, but Headmistress was firm," Tess says. "And she was right. I'm much happier, after a bit of a rocky start. Much. Happier! Mmmmf!"

Tess squeezes you tightly and presses her lips to yours. She's soft and warm under you. It's exciting holding a new lover, a surprise admirer. Unlike Morgan's weedy figure or Lolo's Amazonian build, Tess is built like you, but orange and pink, a ginger cake to your cream cake.

"Cake," you say. "You're cake."

Tess laughs. "No, you!" she says. She nibbles at your lips. "Mmn-mmn-mmn-mmn-mmn-mmn-mmn-mmn-mmn!"

"Ahahahah stop it!" you cry.

"Never, never!" Tess says.

"Alright you now!" You give it right back to her, nibbling her lips and tickling her with little darting licks from your stiff tongue-tip. "Mmn-mmn-mll-lll-mll-mmn-mmf-lll-lll-lll-mmn!"

"Up, up!" Tess says, tugging upward from the waist of your robe.

"No you!" you say.

Both robes go up, in the event, and then it's a frantic race of fingers on fur then into wet slippery folds to see who can bring whom off first.

Tess wins.

"AAAAHHH!!" you cry out as Tess Lectura wrings a climax out of you. Your toes claw into the bedcovers as Tess spins out your ecstatic spasms until you fall atop her, limp.

"I, ah, I, ah, I'll get you back," you pant.

Tess puts her cool lips to your ear. Your ears must be glowing bright pink with heat.

"Is that a promise?" she whispers.

"Threat."

"Ahahaha, still the Minerval, Fay," Tess says. "You're a Happy Bunny now."

"I, hh, didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." Tess taps her fingertip on your forehead. "I know."

"B-b-b...Beautiful."

"You can call me a prying bitch if you want, Fay," Tess says. "I won't take it wrong. I am a prying bitch."

"Beautiful prying bitch, then, Tess," you say. "Why didn't you pull me, back in Minerval?"

"I tried," Tess said. "And then I was here, and you and Morgan were each other's shadows."

"Still are," you say. "But now I'm here."

"Roll off, I want to be next to you," Tess says.

You lie side by side, looking up at the ceiling. Tess takes your hand in hers, rubbing your juices from her fingers to yours.

"It was hard, first year," Tess says. "I ended up as the Librarian's pet."

"Morgan was Miss Wormwood's pet," you say. "I was nobody's pet. Claws out alleycat."

"Lap cat," Tess says. "Persian."

"Burmese!" you protest. "Persian cats are smash-faced idiots."

"Hahaha alright," Tess allows. "Burmese. Miaowwww."

"Mrrrrr," you reply.

"Bath?" Tess suggests.

"Yes."

"I'll tell you some secrets," Tess says. "And I think you owe me a threat."

"Ha ha ha," you say. "All fun and games till somebody pops your top."

"I may be nearsighted but you have one of the most ridiculous O faces I've ever seen," Tess says. "Bright pink, sweat plastering that platinum hair to your forehead, puffing and blowing and drooling."

"Just for that, Tess, just for that," you say, giving her a fierce look.

"Haha Fay," Tess says. "Just wanted to be sure it was a serious threat." Tess unspools her glasses from a finger ring back to cover her eyes. "Ah. Alright, first secret. Follow me."

"Wait, those aren't the same glasses," you say. They'd started out as thick circular clear glass lenses in simple heavy frames. Now her glasses were oval lenses, cradled in copper-gold frames covered with little upswept tips that looked like licking flames.

Tess gives you a crooked smile and raises her eyebrows. She taps a fingertip on the orange tresses covering her temple. "Guess I popped your top."

You sigh. "Touché," you say. "Lead on, oh Mistress of Transformations."

"Ahahahaha," Tess says. "Right this way." She lifts her wand and reaches back with her other hand to lead you. Pausing a moment at her door, she stares intently as if she's looking right through it. With a word, she looses the ward she'd wrapped round her chamber. Leading you out into the hall, still barefoot, she takes a quick series of turns. After the third turn, you no longer see any windows and you've lost your sense of direction.

"Alright...here," Tess says. You're standing in a dim alcove in some part of House Beavertail you don't recognize at all. With all the winding around the halls -- empty halls -- it seems much bigger on the inside. Tess studies a wall panel worked in marquetry. At first it strikes you as an abstract, crazy-quilt assemblage of irregular wooden mosaic pieces, but gradually it starts taking on depth and shape.

Tess squeezes your hand. "Close your eyes, Fay," she says. "Hold tight and don't let go, tricky bit here."

"Tess...?" you start, but the breath is snatched from your mouth. A touch of vertigo strikes you. Your knees wobble, and as you're trying to find your balance, Tess yanks you forward and you stumble into her with a squeak, opening your eyes.

You're nose to nose again.

"That was the hard part," Tess says.

"Where are we?" you ask.

Tess says, "Back corridor. No proper space for it. It's sort of inbetween. Tricky twist."

"Is it safe?" you ask.

"Now that we're inside, yes," Tess says.

You're standing in a narrow corridor paneled in ghost-grey wood, with a dead end at your back and a cross corridor a few steps away.

"So is there a bath hiding back here somewhere?" you ask.

"Ahaha, there's a whole secret apartment," Tess says. "Bath. Tiny little practice room and library. Dining cove. No kitchen, though, that's how I found out."

You blink at Tess, nodding for her to go on. Obviously she wants to preen about her extraction of Beavertail's secrets. You would too. Maybe not straight off to a new lover, but Tess is swanning around her secret domains with you at her elbow.

"You rascal you," you tell Tess, playing up to her gleeful pride. "Who?"

"Cook," she says. "She has a letch for new Beavertails. Anyone hungry for a tumble, she sweeps them right up under her apron."

Either Tess knows that you're going to be Cook's latest dish, or she doesn't.

"So-oh?"

Tess says, "So I'm still half a Minerval, so I found out how Cook gets in when she's serving guests. But Cook rules her kitchen like the Evil Empress, so I only dared to try her door when Cook was gone during term break. We went in the side way. Out's easier. Hush now."

Tess raises her wand and makes slow, questing gestures. Satisfied, she lowers her wand and leads you around the corner to a door opening on a sumptuously furnished suite just as Tess had described.

"Bath through here, Fay," Tess says.

The bathing chamber is tiled in shades of marine blue, sky blue, pale blue, and cloud-white. An arching brass dolphin looks poised to pour water into the gleaming copper tub.

"Learned this one from Housemistress," she says, licking her lips. She kisses her fingertips and strokes them along the blue-tiled walls. The abstract bands of cloudy colors rearrange themselves into heavy-breasted mermaids cavorting with bearded mermen. The mermen reached out toward the mermaids, their members stiff and aching, but the mermaids laughed and teased. Only in the deep blue shadows were the mermaids entwined with partners, not merely their mermen counterparts but with every manner of lusty sea creature.

"Housemistress?" you say.

"Shh, I think she didn't even notice I was there," Tess says. "After the end of Spring term Housemistress was out in the gardens giving herself a grand long rack-off with nobody about but the birds and the bees. I happened to pass by just at the moment of crisis and it knocked me flat into the lavender beds, my hips quaking with Mistress Beeblossom's joy waves till she was sated. When she started up again, I tiptoed away as fast as I could so I didn't end up face down in the next bed, fucking the basil into pesto." Tess sniffed. "Fay, the look on your face. That's hardly my wildest story."

"You've come a long way from being the Librarian's pet, Tess," you say.

"Yes," she says. "This time you actually noticed me."

You stare into her eyes, covered by her flame-rimmed glasses, and she stares back.

"Bath?" you say.

Tess laughs. "Bath. Then more secrets. Places to find your feet here."

"And ****," you say, grinning.

"You know what they say about living well," Tess says. "Beavertail is my **** on Whiplash, that useless git."

Tess tickles the dolphin under its chin and steaming water pours into the copper tub. In the blue shadows behind the steam, mermaids find their pleasures, their bodies arching and their tails curling in exaltations of bodily joy.

You have Ambition +2, Bravery -1, Cunning +2, Diligence +0; XP: 1
FRIENDS: Morgan, who also owes you a FAVOR.
You also have a date with Cook, who walks about in a mouthwatering scent cloud of cinnamon apple tart.

Using STAMINA, roll +DILIGENCE(0) to HAVE SEX with Tess Lectura again.

⚄⚁ + 0 = 7

When you HAVE SEX, on a 7-9, take +1 XP and describe the complications; if appropriate, use STAMINA to go again or avoid a CONSEQUENCE of being exhausted.