“Shhh,” Aclysia let out a calming whisper, while stroking Reysha’s head. Laying in her arms, the tiger girl softly wept, as images bolted through her head like flying arrows. Hands, red with the blood of her raw meal, pressed against her temples, as if she could shove her thoughts back into her skull. More of the life-sustaining fluid dripped into the pond, leaving little trails of crimson that quickly dissipated in the much larger body of water.

Apexus kept devouring the half-shredded bear, while watching over those two. Not only did he want to prevent yet more blood from leaking into their next best water source, but he was also at a loss what else he could do. Aside from silently sitting to the side and contributing nothing but his gawking presence.

It had been predictable that this scene would surface. Once the bear had been killed and Reysha dug into the magic-rich meat, the tiger girl had lost self-control in several stages. First was the savage rush of Noir getting satisfied. The smell alone had driven her wild and once she started actually eating, there was no holding her back. Teeth had pulled strips of raw meat off the bones, while her claws had done their best to rip away the fur of the animal.

Feeling had rushed back into her depressed body. It only fuelled the overbearing brutality of her feeding frenzy. Apexus, having expected little else, had just backed off and waited his turn. He and Aclysia had kept close watch on her eyes in particular. The dark grey colour sclera surrounded crazily wide opened, blue eyes.

Eyes that eventually turned glassy, then wet. Once her stomach was as full as her athletic frame allowed and Noir’s frenzy over, Reysha was left with the emotions the same condition had dulled. It was better that she was able to feel again, everything was an improvement from being traumatized and unable to emotionally approach that trauma. It also, inescapably, meant that she suffered a breakdown.

Kneeling over the corpse she had shredded with her own two hands definitely did not help in repressing the memory. The blood everywhere had the same colour as the flames that day. The crimson of unsated hellfire. Although the death of the thousands had been quick, Reysha remembered screams, many screams and horrified faces.

“It’s all my fault,” she pressed out.

“You have a long life to repent,” Aclysia calmly said and kept the embrace tight. “As long as you live, your last failure, however large, doesn’t define you. Focus on bringing yourself in order, then we can see how we might improve the world,” patiently the angel brushed through the tiger girl’s hair, “breathe slowly.” That was her final advice, before the metal fairy formed her quiet words into a melody. The angelic tongue reverberated softly between the trees as Aclysia sang a calming lullaby. That the quivering redhead covered her in tears and blood in the process didn’t bother the black and white woman.

Apexus had soon finished the bear and the pond was then relatively clean. For now, they owned this spot of the Omniverse and nothing bothered them. A moment of respite, a short arrival in their flight to somewhere. While the slime’s bones shrunk and shortened to the shape and scale of a normal, if tall, human, he stood over his girls and hid them under his emerald wings. It was just the three of them and Aclysia’s song was only for their ears.

In the final stage of her loss of self-control, Reysha simply fell asleep.

____________________________________________________________________________

Later, Reysha opened her eyes. It was torture. They felt dry and the last tears had transformed into a crust that sealed her lids in a way that crumbled with an unpleasant sensation, only to get into her eyes as bothersome crystals. She almost made the mistake of rubbing her eyes, but she was vaguely aware of the filth that covered them.

With a groan, she spied through her light-sensitive eyes. ‘Falling asleep right after fixing Noir really fucks with perception,’ she realized. Everything had bright colours. After seeing everything as greyish, washed out shades for so long, having a proper view of things was mildly disorienting. She felt that her back was resting against something soft though and she smelled Apexus’ intense pheromones.

She felt secure thanks to those factors. Nothing else though. For reasons that she was very well aware of, the usual wave of lust that overcame her past these feeding episodes just didn’t surface. She pressed her face into those feathers, took a deep breath and tried to ignite any form of physical passion possible. Nothing happened and, disappointed with herself, Reysha rose to take care of the physical urges that she did feel.

“Water is right of you,” Apexus instructed and gently nudged her in that direction.

“Thank you,” Reysha mumbled and smiled. A slight smile, for her standards, but a smile nonetheless. Even with narrowed eyes, she soon spotted the edge of the pond. After washing her hand and throwing some water in her face, she felt a little bit better. A whole lot better, in the grand scheme of things, actually. With a few more blinks, she managed to focus on their surroundings.

It was still day and the blood spots from their meal were still relatively fresh, she couldn’t have been out that long. Apexus leaned against a tree behind her. He now looked quite humanoid. His skin had taken a tanned, light brown shade and was no longer translucent.

This, actually, made him a whole lot creepier, if Reysha was honest.

At least when he displayed his origin as a slime, it was clear that he was not a real humanoid in origin. As he was now, a naked man without definitions where muscles should be, no sexual signs, no nails on hands or feet, and no nose, he looked like something that was only walking in human skin. Given the kind of demon that he had acquired that very same outside from, this was of little wonder.

The wings, fox ears and regular lips helped somewhat to offset that. However, the eyes were truly what made Apexus presentable. His blue eyes looked around with well-meaning curiosity, a wild wariness and a steady preparedness to take action. He was direct, he was wild, he was simple but not shallow. He was focused on her, watching if she needed any more of his help and wanting her to succeed on her own and heal where she could.

Reysha loved him.

Which only made her complete inability to feel any level of lust at the moment that much more bothersome. She wanted to be like she normally was, she wanted to take what she had done wrong and use it but every last facet of her felt compromised, stuck and out of her reach. Sex wasn’t particularly important in terms of pulling herself back together, but it was right there, at the top of her mind.

To distract herself from her misery, Reysha asked, “Where is Aclysia?”

Apexus raised a hand and pointed away from the pond. In the sun-kissed green that stretched out between the spread-out trees, the metal fairy stood, her eyes focused on the sky. Her lips were silently moving, counting the seconds. “She is watching the sun,” the slime explained. “Trying to guess whether days here are as long as on Ctania.”

“I guess she doesn’t have a retina to worry about,” Reysha mumbled and turned back to the pond. Her reflection looked terrible. Not that she was ugly, her sharp facial features were as attractive and dangerous as ever. It was just that her resting face, still pretty stained with blood, dried guts and tears, wasn’t the crazy hotness she was used to. “We won’t move soon, right?”

“No such plans at the moment,” Apexus answered in a slightly awkward fashion and watched as Reysha peeled out of her clothes. The layers of leather were quickly discarded, the layers of cloth underneath added to the pile and the slime felt something inside him stir when watching the redheaded tiger girl in all her nudeness. Something that had lain dormant for quite a while.

The dark brown stripes, symmetrically covering her curves like layers of chocolate on a masterfully formed figure of caramel, directed his gaze. From the feet that sunk into the water, one stripe after the other guided him up her smooth legs. With every step, the roundness of her juicy behind jiggled a fair bit, a beauty emphasized by her naturally swinging step. Muscles in her back and shoulders softly shifted under the taut skin. The messy tide of her naturally wild hair was as beautiful as ever, if a bit sticky, due to recent events.

Apexus put a lid on his urges and they quickly settled down to normal levels. ‘Not the time,’ he thought. Albeit he wasn’t as damaged as Reysha was, he didn’t really have the urge to engage in deliberately-non-procreational coitus until they had things figured out a bit more. Regardless, a bit of staring never hurt anybody.

Reysha looked over her shoulder. Noticing his unashamed ogling, her dark lips curved into a wide smile. ‘At least he is still interested,’ it was a happy thought. She reached down to her crotch and touched the somewhat hairy area. It was the only part of a tiger girl’s body, outside the head, where hair still grew. Not even a slight impulse of pleasure, just her hand touching another part of her body. She sighed, that soured the mood a bit, but she took what she could get.

Slowly, she stepped into the deepest part of the pond. The water was cool, but in a calming way. The chirping of the birds in the distance was a pleasant melody. ‘Did Aclysia sing to me?’ the tiger girl wondered, suddenly realizing how hazy the memories between the fight with the bear and her waking up were. It wasn’t the only stretch of near impossible recollection that she faced. She barely even remembered what had happened with the Parasyte. ‘I know I took it out of Apexus but… did I say something afterwards… I think I… yeah, I did…’

As difficult as it was, she remembered crying and mumbling to herself. Too late, she realized that prodding at those memories made her mind jump to the source of it. Down to the navel in the water, standing in the middle of the pond, Reysha suddenly stopped. The water rippled around her and in the tiny waves, she saw the burning runes in the sky. Thousands of people stood, lined up as the circle to their own end.

She swallowed heavily and tasted the bitterness of vomit in her throat. Miracolously, the meal stayed inside. ‘Breathe slowly, don’t worry Apexus,’ she said to herself, hoping the slime hadn’t noticed anything. ‘They’re keeping you around, you should be thankful for that and don’t be too much of a burden,’ she told herself and slowly went down on her knees to completely submerge herself in the water.

Leaning against the tree, Apexus watched. While he had noticed the minor oddity, he didn’t think anything of it. Not that he could have been any more concerned even if he did. Reysha disappeared under the surface. It looked somewhat amusing, the way she ruffled her own hair under the surface.

His left ear turned on its own, when he heard Aclysia approach. “She seems to be doing better,” the angel noted.

Apexus nodded. “I think we all are,” he gave his honest opinion on the matter. At the very least, he himself felt things slowly stabilizing inside his mind. “I feel like my core had to grow mental adaptations and it's slowly settling in.”

Chuckling, Aclysia sat down next to him, as Reysha broke through the surface. “That seems like a good way to phrase it, darling,” she said and took a deep breath. “The air here is sweeter, that helps as well, I think.”

Reysha turned towards them, opened her mouth to add something, then shook her head and kept it to herself. At least, that’s what she planned, but Apexus had noticed. Urged by his quizzingly tilted head, she said, “I just… don’t really feel like I can join you in being that hopeful yet,” she said reached up to her head. The current control of her mental faculties she experienced seemed threatened at every passing second. One wrong memory, one glance at something at a wrong angle, and it would come under assault.

She didn’t say anything else, she didn’t like the way they looked at her when she worried them. It made her feel exactly as vulnerable as she was.

After looking at the redhead for a few seconds, Apexus decided to not dig any deeper. When he asked, “Did you find out the length of day?” the Rogue let out a thankful sigh and resumed cleaning herself.

“I have acquired a hopefully accurate impression, from the speed at which the sun moves over the horizon,” Aclysia answered. “I would guess that daylight here lingers for less time than on Ctania, but it doesn’t seem like this Leaf meaningfully deviates from the standard day-night cycle duration.”

With gods having access to so much leeway in creating their worlds, it occurred quite often that they decided to mess with something this basic. There were Leafs where every circle of the sun was followed by six circles of the moon. Some may have an unmoving sun. Others could have a sun that was also the moon. In the first place a ‘sun’ in the sense of the Leaf was a ball of plasma in only most, but not the majority, of cases. A sun just had to be a bright object that supplied light and warmth, hanging in the sky.

Apexus nodded, understanding all that. A series of drops hit the water, as Reysha wrung out her hair. “What now?” the damaged maniac asked.

That was a tremendous question.