Considering the fact that Igraine wasn’t particularly quiet, everyone else woke up, except for Alice and Yuuki. The rest of the group looked at the new forms with around the same attitude: tired acceptance. They went on with days, freshening up one by one in the bathroom and eating breakfast in a kitchen that was far too small for all of them to fit comfortably.

“Morning.” Alice said as she was walking out of the bedroom with a mug full of steaming coffee.

“What did you two do?” Helen asked curiously.

“What do you mean?” Alice decided to play dumb even as her three tails moved back and forth in amusement.

“At least tone down the glow.” Igraine rubbed her eyes lazily.

“I’m not glowing.” Alice said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you are.” Rose said and the others nodded as well.

“Your brains can’t quite process what you’re seeing, so it adds a glow effect to blur the details out a bit. Automatic defense mechanism to maintain sanity. Similar to what happens when dealing with eldritch abominations, except it’s not due to the ugliness, but the opposite.” Yuuki said as she walked out of the room. “Good morning.”

“Eldritch beings exist?” Cassandra asked worriedly while the others had flat expressions, looking at the pair of common sense destroyers.

“I assume so.” Yuuki said as she pulled a mug of coffee out of thin air and sipped it happily. “Not in this world anymore, but in some others, most likely.”

“Let me guess, you killed them?” Igraine asked, just waiting for more insane things to be said casually.

“I found a couple in Hell that I killed, but the majority of them were corpses long before I got there.”

“How were you in Hell, it was destroyed thousands of years ago?” Rose asked curiously. Everyone in the room looked at her and everyone aside from Yuuki was smirking.

“She’s the one who destroyed it.” Helen said smugly.

Rose stared between the vampire and Yuuki before she pinched the bride of her nose and began talking to herself quietly. “Why am I even surprised, I shouldn’t be surprised, this is just getting more and more absurd and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Unfortunately for her, everyone in the room had abnormally good hearing.

“Maybe we should try to be normal for a while. If we keep at it like this, they won’t be surprised by anything we do anymore.” Alice said while winking at Yuuki.

“Why would we want to surprise them?”

“Because it’s fun.”

There was a few seconds of silence in the room.

“I’ll make Amanda and Helen some new clothing, the rest of you can leave and do something.” Rose said as she went to fetch her tools.

“There’s no way they can leave like this!” Igraine yelled while pointing at the two entities that according to Yuuki herself, were too beautiful for their brains to understand, or something like that. That and they had way too many tails. And their hairs were strange as well.

“Yeah, they attracted too much attention even when they were more… normal.” Helen said, but she was also throwing glances at all the fluff she had to prevent herself from jumping at. Amanda left to the booth to be measured.

“Why would we care about attention?” Alice asked, a genuine question.

“You don’t, but we might want to come to this beach later in our lives without being stared at.” Igraine said while crossing her arms.

“But if they’re looking at us, why would it be a problem for you?” Yuuki interjected, puzzled.

“Oh, so they’ll be too busy fawning over you to even remember me?” Igraine joked as she pretended to be hurt.

“That’s not what I said. But according to your own logic, if we draw away more attention from you, it should be strictly beneficial as fewer people will stare at you in specific than if you were alone.” She said diplomatically. There was an awkward silence for a moment, before Alice came to the rescue.

“She was joking. Again.”

“But the pattern was completely different.”

“It was a different kind of joke.”

“I see. Regardless, I don’t plan on leaving today, I’ll simply lay in bed and read.” Yuuki said as she finished her coffee and walked back to the bedroom.

Igraine looked at Cassandra. “Do you want to go out shopping for a bit?”

The priestess blushed. “A-actually I kind of want to stay and hug all those tails. They seem really soft.”

“That they do.” Igraine looked around for Helen, but she'd already made a break for the bedroom, forgetting that Rose was going to take her measurements.

--

Alice was comfortably laying her head in Yuuki’s lap while being gently blanketed by her many tails. The kitsune was running her fingers through the black hair absentmindedly.

Another Yuuki was currently reading in the corner with Amanda, Cassandra and Helen each getting three tails to hug. Igraine looked at the blissful scenery in front of her and prevented a dry laugh from coming out. She had remembered how much she always wanted a family, how naive she was. She fell in love with someone who turned out to have a lot more political leverage than she thought, and decided to take their child while trying to silence her. She regretted not fighting harder for Arthur, but seeing him all grown up gave her peace of mind after all those years. She decided to sit with her back against the wall as she thought about all the different things she missed out on.

She suddenly felt an incredibly warm embrace as yet another Yuuki wrapped her in a hug.

“Because anything you feel, I feel.” She whispered the answer to Igraine’s inner question, quiet enough that only she and Alice could hear it.

Igraine leaned into the embrace, feeling more comfort than she had felt in years. It was so incredibly warm. As much as she wanted to help others, she always had a hard time helping herself, or asking for help. She wanted to be someone others could rely on, but seeing as she was on the run for over a decade, she hadn’t made any lasting friends in that time to really help out. Yuuki, as powerful as she was, seemed horribly scarred at the same time. Igraine wanted to get her to open up more, but it seemed that the fox had noticed that she wasn’t taking her own advice.

After some time, Yuuki put down the book and decided to drift to sleep like all the rest in the room. It seemed that so much comfort was really taking a toll on how much they got done in a day. But it was fine. After all, she had no reason to hurry.

Illiterate_potato

I'm giving the notice now rather than on Friday (mainly because I might forget), that I'll be taking the next week off, and there won't be new chapters. Luckily, I'm not anywhere near burnout yet, but I want to take my time with some of the chapters that will come soon.