Family Matters

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“1:12 AM on a school night? Really?” With crossed arms and a stern frown to match her tone, Brenda was very obviously displeased with him. He had hoped that she had decided to go directly from work to bed, since she had worked late today, without noticing that he wasn’t home.

Alas, that wasn’t how it had gone and here she was doing the disappointed mom routine. He should probably be feeling guiltier about it than he was. Normally, he was fairly certain he would be. But for some reason, the guilt was uncharacteristically muted, at least as far as breaking curfew went.

Maybe it was because what he had stayed out to do was helping keep both of them safe. Maybe it was because her ire didn’t have the edge to it that it’d had last Monday after his ‘disappearing act’ with Qhila after the rat ogre. Something he was fairly sure was because she’d known where he was and part of her was relieved that he was acting like a normal teen.

Maybe it was because, try as he might, he couldn’t stop himself from being distracted by the fact that her crossed arms pushed Brenda’s breasts upwards and together, causing the otherwise loose blouse to be stretched tight over their prodigious size. He felt substantially more guilty about that than about staying out late.

“I guess we got carried away…”

“You think?” she deadpanned. “I know I didn’t make much of a fuss about it when you stayed the night the other day, but you still have to keep up with your school, young man.”

“Yes, yes, I know. I’ll be more careful next time” ’Not because it matters much for my future anymore, but I need to keep up the illusion to not drag you into the Abyss.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. “Though in my defense, I’ve been getting more and better sleep the past week than I usually do…”

“‘I usually stay up too late playing video games’ is not the save you think it is.”

‘Big guns it is, then.’ “Point taken. But at least I have good news. I told Qh-Kira that you’d like to meet her, and she thinks she’s ready to try, so I figured we could invite her over for dinner one of these days?”

“That was quick, considering…” The sternness of Brenda’s facade cracked and wavered with the change of topic, enthusiasm to meet her son’s friend-slash-crush shining through.

“Well, as it turns out, hearing what a kind and caring person you are from someone she trusts makes a big difference.”

“Aww, sweetie, did you really tell her that? Not the ‘ugh, she’s so embarrassing’ line kids usually go with?” As expected, sneaking in a bit of flattery had finished the proverbial job. Probably helped along considerably by the fact that he was being mostly truthful.

“Yeah. She, uh, asked what it’s like to have a real mom. Couldn’t really serve her prepacked teen angst then…”

“Oh no, what happened to hers?” Judging from Brenda’s expression, she would’ve had to make an effort not to try to supportingly hug Qhila if they’d been in the same room.

“Addiction. Apparently, the nicest thing she’s ever done was the one time she offered to share her **** with Kira…” That was… more or less true. Qhila’s mother had an Orronth addiction, as was the intended design of their tribe. The ‘sharing ****’ thing was a mundane-passing way to say that her mother had made the bottle of concentrated pheromones for Qhila, so she could use it to try to entice the dragon into rescinding her pariah status.

The reason Qhila had even had it on her in the forest was that it was a memento of the one time her mother did something well meaning for her. Aside from keeping said memento, she had been fairly casual about the whole thing. Probably a result of kobolds not really having family bonds in general.

Meanwhile, Brenda was much more affected by it, the need to counteract the sadness with a show of affection bringing her to pull John in for a hug. “Poor girl! Give her a hug from me next time you see her. Or whatever she would be comfortable with, I guess.”

“Sure thing. She’ll definitely appreciate the sentiment, at least, but maybe save the actual hug until after you buy her dinner.”

The jest successfully lightened the mood, drawing a giggle from his mom as she released him from the hug. “About that dinner, did she happen to say when she would have her evenings free?”

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have any plans laid. She’s a bit of a recluse…”

“No wonder you two get along then. But I guess that makes my work the limiting factor…” She thought for a moment. “I get out of work early tomorrow, but that’s too short notice. Maybe Agatha can pick up my afternoon Friday or next Wednesday if I pick up hers tomorrow though…”

John raised a brow. “Wouldn’t it be better to just ask Kira if it’s too short notice first?”

“I don’t want to put pressure on her to accept it if she would be more comfortable with a few days to mentally prepare herself…”

“Ah. In this case, I think sooner is actually better.”

“A bit of an overthinker then?” She smiled sympathetically.

“Well, you did call us birds of a feather just before…”

“I suppose I did.” She giggled. “Okay, ask her in the morning and let me know what she says. And now, off to bed with you, young man, it’s still a school night.”

He made a mock salute, then did as he’d been told.

“What’s your family like?” Christie’s soft spoken question emerged into the comfortable silence of finishing up lunch on the school roof.

“It’s hard to encompass all of it simply, but I’d say they’re pretty great. My mom can be a bit embarrassing at times, but despite working a lot she somehow finds time to clean and to make three home cooked meals a day, and it’s kind of adorable how happy she is that I’ve been less of a shut-in since last Monday.

“Grandpa is a bit of a goofball most of the time, but he’s also probably the cheeriest person in the world. I only think I’ve seen him not smiling once in my life, and that time he scared the crap out of Frank despite being like a foot and a half shorter…” Evidently, that mental image, or whatever, was amusing enough to make a blind girl giggle softly.

“Grandma is a bit more reserved, but always good for some advice, especially about people stuff, even when I can’t even properly explain the situation. And when it’s the whole crowd of aunts and uncles and stuff… well, it’s a bunch of shit-talking, but in a friendly banter sort of way. And if things go really south for someone, the rest will drop whatever they’re doing and come help pick up the pieces…”

There was a moment of quiet between them before Christie responded, “They sound nice… Mr. W- Father also helps me when things are… bad. Often, before I even tell him, he just… knows. But sometimes, I wish he was easier to… talk to. N- not that he’s doing anything wrong, it’s just… It feels like he’s… like he has been battling Torak for millennia and even though he’s trying to just be a regular person there is no real erasing that I am very small and insignificant compared to that… I know it’s a silly feeling but…”

From what John could remember of having the Belgariad read to him as a bedtime story, there wasn’t much similarity between the immortal wizard’s regular person guise and Lord Chastian-Wessel’s. ’Still, an older-than-he-looks wizard of immense power is a very apt comparison...’

“I don’t think it’s silly. He’s… very impressive and I think I get what you mean. He feels like none of the troubles regular people experience would even faze him for a moment… But I also think that ‘insignificant’ is just about the last thing in the world you are to him.” He reached out to give her hand a squeeze.

After being silent for a little bit, she asked, “What about your dad?”

John looked down and took a deep breath. He didn’t like to linger on memories of him. At best, they were bittersweet. At worst… But sitting here with Christie on the rooftop, after the shy, sweet, blind girl had shared some of her own uncertainty and vulnerability with him, somehow for the first time in six years the hurt didn’t feel fresh and raw.

“When I was little, he was my hero. All I wanted was to grow up and be just like him. But… he died when I was twelve. He was on his way home from an out of state engineering conference, when another car hit his and ran them both into a lake next to the road. He had taken smaller roads instead of the interstate for some reason, and it took a week before they found him…”

Christie had given his hand a squeeze partway through him talking, and as he neared the end of it, she shifted from sitting across from him to next to him and gently nudging him to lean against her.

By instinct, he had taken the invitation before his consciousness had even interpreted the gesture. From the soft warmth of her touch, her body supporting his, and her arm around his back, somehow he felt that in spite of the gnawing void of festered grief in his chest, things were still right in the world. Like his loss hadn’t irreparably broken things after all.

And then, of course, came the snarky inner voice telling him that it had been ridiculous to feel like it had in the first place. Ridiculous and selfish, considering that the very girl who was offering him support and comfort had lost and suffered so much more.

He tried to push that feeling, that voice, away at first, but to no avail. The pressure of it built all the same, until he had to let it out. “I… Even though it’s…” He sighed. “Sorry. I know that y- that a lot of people have had it far worse…”

“Don’t.” Her voice was soft and gentle, but the usual hesitant shyness was replaced with the hidden marble of willpower she had shown on rare occasions. “I lost my parents, my real ones, in a car accident too. I don’t remember them, but I remember the feeling of them being gone. You deserve to grieve, as much as you need.”

Then, they just sat together like that for a long time, and ended up skipping the class after lunch.

“Nervous?”

“No.” The fact that Qhila had spent the last 10 seconds looking at the bottle of humanis elixir rather put that statement into doubt, but John wasn’t going to poke any more at it.

They were in her lair, with about an hour to go before they were supposed to be at his house for dinner with Brenda. In addition to the elixir, John had talked her into getting some new clothes for the occasion. While the elixir could resize clothes as well through the power of magic, her usual outfits were ones a mundane wouldn’t wear outside of a nerd convention or renaissance faire.

Rather than continue just looking at the bottle, John’s question prompted Qhila to recheck the measurement for a dose that’d last until midnight. A somewhat pointless thing to do, as Observe had already confirmed it to be accurate. Once that was done, though, she took the proverbial plunge and drank it.

It took a moment before it took effect, then she grew over the course of about two seconds to nearly half again her normal height. This made her still really, really short by human standards but something that seemed at least marginally plausible without medical issues.

As she grew, scales, claws, and tail were absorbed into her body, leaving behind human limbs and digits, and her ears shrunk to the round shape of regular humans. Her hair shifted in a subtle way that John likely wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t see it while it was happening. Presumably, the effect of the quills disappearing as it turned into real hair rather than a proto-feather facsimile. Finally, her eyes changed color from amethyst purple to blue.

All in all, despite no longer having the monster parts of the monster girl, it was unmistakably still Qhila. The same sexy figure, the same cute face, the same body language and expressions. Though their color had shifted, her eyes retained their gem-like lustre and were as breathtaking as ever. She even still had fairly pronounced canines even if conforming to human norms made them significantly smaller than her usual fangs.

Transformation completed, she shifted her weight from foot to foot for a bit, before taking a few steps back and forth. “Balancing without a tail is weird…”

That was not a concern John had thought of, but in retrospect it made sense. “I can keep your leg AGI buffed, if that would help?”

After a moment of thought, she shook her head. “I think I just need a minute to get used to it, as long as I don’t have to fight like this…”

She walked a bit back and forth, mumbling something about the elevation of everything being all weird. Once she was satisfied with her grasp of tailless balancing, she turned to the new clothes.

She had quickly grown to be supremely unbothered by getting dressed while John could see, and this remained true now. Unusually, there was something competing with her allure for his attention: the rather peculiar sight of her clothes changing size as she took them off and the ones she reached for changing size as she began putting them on.

The first outfit was her attempt at recreating her usual wear from mundane passing options. Pocket rich cargo pants with an equally pocket rich vest over a grey shirt was not an outfit made to be attractive. All the same, it was also unequal to the task of fully hiding Qhila’s figure. The fact that she managed to look hot even in these unflattering clothes paradoxically created its own kind of enticing feeling from the implicit promise of how much better she’d look without said clothes. Beyond that, she was a hard hat and some tools in the pockets away from fitting in at a construction site, if one ignored that she was still a tiny woman.

“I don’t think this one is a winner. Not that you don’t look good, I’m pretty sure you could rock a plastic sack with holes for the head and arms, but it’s going to look weird as hell to my mom, given the occasion. Maybe if I’d given her the impression that you were borderline obsessive about carpentry or something…”

“But I can keep my things on hand in case we run into trouble.”

“Yeah, I get that. But I’ll be with you the entire time and, like you said before, fighting without your tail is going to be a problem. So regardless of the outfit, our game plan in that case is that I hold the rear while we flee to the nearest crowd of mundanes.”

“... I guess I can’t argue with that.” She sighed and turned to change.

The next outfit was the female shut-in classic combo of jeans and an oversized hoodie. Despite being oversized, the hoodie wasn’t fully equal to the task of concealing the alluring width of her hips. Additionally, the jeans being tighter than the cargo pants put more emphasis on the thickness of her thighs, while still doing so in a mostly understated fashion. Beyond that, the outfit made John want to just curl up with her on the couch with an anime or a pair of handheld consoles until sometime next week.

“Definitely less of an eyebrow raiser, even if it’s a bit warm for hoodies this time of the year.”

“But I can fit my crossbow in here, at least while it’s folded up.” She emphasized the front pocket of the hoodie with her hands. “And the shirt is loose enough to at least offer some protection against short blades and darts.”

“Which brings us back to the ‘we’re not supposed to be fighting in this, and if we end up in a fight anyway, we run away’ thing. If having the crossbow anyway helps you feel better about the situation, then fair enough, but my mom is going to be all sorts of confused if it falls out of your pocket. Also, I think we should still at least look at the last option…” ‘and not just because I want to see it on you.’

Qhila muttered something he didn’t catch, but changed anyway. The last outfit was a white sundress. And a pair of shorts that were entirely hidden by it. No bra though, because she found them uncomfortable and, as she said, it wasn’t like her breasts were big enough to need the support anyway. Technically, the bra thing was true for all the outfits, but with the sundress leaving her shoulders bare except for two narrow straps it felt a lot more significant in this case. It would still take a lot for a nip slip to occur, but just knowing that it was technically possible…

“You look great. Super cute, with a touch of understated sexy.” Which was true regardless of the touch of nip slip risk. “The closest thing to a problem I can think of is that I’ll be struggling to keep my hands to myself while you’re wearing it.”

“And how suited is it for anything besides testing your self-control?” Qhila asked drily.

“It’s great. Looks good without seeming formal, which is perfect for a casual occasion where you still want to make a good first impression. The one with the hoodie also fits, but looks either like you didn’t care so much about that impression or like you cared more about something else. But Mom probably won’t mind either way.”