Okay, deep breaths. I might be a fox girl for now, but there’s no reason to panic.

Alice grabbed my hand. “It’s okay Beryl, you can always be my cute little foxy~.”

PANIC!

“S-Seriously Viela, how do you shapeshift back and forth like that?” I asked.

“It’s a soul magic kind of thing,” the fox spirit answered. “You can sense your own soul now, can’t you?”

Okay, more deep breaths.

I closed my eyes and focused inward. Beneath the sensation of my breathing, and my beating heart, and the blood and mana coursing through my body… oh!

“It’s there!” I said. “Like that blazing light that flared up during the ritual, I can see it! But, it’s… a little out of focus and blurry?”

Viela looked at me like that wasn’t the answer she was expecting to hear.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No that’s, uh, that’s great!” she offered with a smile. “Now that you have basic soul perception, I can teach you some meditation techniques to refine that.”

“And then I can learn how to ‘shift’ back to my human form? How long is that going to take?”

The fox spirit looked away, scratching her cheek. “It’s hard to say, but, you can probably master this in a few weeks…”

“A few weeks?! I’m pretty sure the Magic Academy starts classes in a few weeks!”

Viela went silent for an awkward moment. “Well, there is one last… No, we can make this work, and there’s no time to waste! But first…”

She shot a wary glance at our other three party members still loitering about the cave’s inner room. Out of all of them, it was Freya who spoke first after scooping up her two cubs.

“Yes, let’s all make sure to give the newlyweds some privacy,” the snow leopard spirit said with a disturbingly smug expression plastered across her face.

Viela and I exchanged a bashful look, but neither of us knew what to say. Just what was Freya plotting…

When the two of us finally had ‘our’ cave room back to ourselves, we grabbed our bedrolls to use as makeshift meditation mats. I noticed that Viela took care to keep her fluffy tail off the stone floor when she sat down.

Damn, I even have to take care of things like this now…

I held my tail on my lap, stroking its long black fur without even realizing what I was doing. Maybe I looked more anxious than I thought because Viela offered me a reassuring smile.

“Just cross your legs, close your eyes, and let’s begin…”

I followed along with her verbal guiding, first getting my breathing under control, then focusing on the bright boundaries of my soul, slowly trying to map out all the edges. Apparently Viela could sense our soul bond as well, but it was all too much of a blurry mass of light for me to make sense of it just yet.

How exactly was I supposed to be doing this? It felt like I was trying to look through a microscope that didn’t have the right magnification, and everything was too out of focus to concentrate.

As one long minute passed into the next, I couldn’t help thinking that there had to be some trick to this…

Suddenly, an inexplicable chill of foreboding made every hair on my body stand on end—like a sixth sense that imminent danger was within striking distance. I opened my eyes and spun around.

Outside the rocky ‘entrance’ to our inner cave, I caught Alice lurking around the corner, staring at us while trembling with excitement. For some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she looked like a hungry cat staring at a squirrel or something.

I cleared my throat. “Alice, we’re kind of in the middle of something here… Wait, why are you holding a brush?!”

Alice shifted on her feet, fidgeting. “B-Beryl, um, you know it’s important to take care of all your hair—”

“Don’t even think about it!” I hugged my fox tail defensively, feeling unusually naked and exposed in a way I couldn’t cover up. “Look, it’s just that this is really important for us right now, okay?”

She glanced back and forth at the two of us with a pouty face, then reluctantly turned around and headed back.

I let out a heavy sigh. Viela gave me a gentle shoulder rub before suggesting we continue.

First control your breathing, then focus inward, mapping out all the boundaries… It all sounded simple enough, and yet, somehow the effort was inexplicably difficult.

Wait… this wasn’t even the reason I wanted to soul bond with Viela in the first place! This was all supposed to be so I could get control over my soul-related anti-magic ability, and now I had to figure out how to shapeshift, too? How did this all get so much more complicated like this?!

No, focus! Focus!

“Hey Beryl, are you hungry?” I heard Titania call out. “I just speared another raptor for di—”

“Seriously, not now! I mean… Thanks for that, really. But how about later, alright?”

Titania anxiously rubbed the back of her neck. “Yeah, my bad…”

I had to sigh again. A communal cave like this wasn’t exactly ideal for our private meditation…

As Viela and I went back into practicing, I noticed the rain outside had stopped. All I could hear was the sound of our steady breathing in and out. I tried matching my breaths to hers and found myself focusing inward even better.

On second thought, what exactly was ‘better’ here? Viela had said this process could take weeks, but that meant it would be basically impossible to tell if I was getting better at this from one minute to the next! Plus, now I had to figure out shifting and controlling my Divine Gift.

Oh, crap. Were those two problems actually related…?

My train of thought was violently derailed by the sudden piercing sound of Viela’s scream. My eyes shot open to see a snow leopard cub chomping down on her brown fox tail, just like it was a chew toy.

“Sasha, nice work!” Freya cheered from the cave’s hallway with a sadistic smirk.

Viela snatched up the mischievous cub, glaring daggers at its mother. “You little…! Do you want to fight?!”

Freya flashed her a smug, shit-eating grin. “Now why would I ever want to fight a fox like you? I mean, you’re sooo busy right now—WAIT!”

The snow leopard spirit turned to flee, but she wasn’t fast enough to dodge the fox’s surprise attack.

Viela pounced onto her with agility I never knew she had, tumbling to the cave floor atop Freya.

“Oh, my. Do you know what happens to bad kitties like you~?”

“P-Pervert fox! Don’t think I’ll go easy on y—aaah!”

The half-naked snow leopard spirit had still been wearing Titania’s oversized shirt, but she quickly became fully naked while squirming under the fox’s titillating assault.

Viela’s fingers danced across her opponent’s exposed belly, tickling her into a squealing mass of naked flesh. Freya’s bare breasts squished flat against the ground, her long snowy tail flailing in the air.

“D-Don’t think this feels really good!” she gasped. “I… I-I’ll bite you, fox!”

“Oh? Kitty, bite me where~?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the obscene spectacle unfolding before me even if I wanted to. Viela worked her fingers higher and higher up Freya’s nude body—until her fingers found their supple targets and Freya moaned with pleasure, submitting to her lewd fate.

Welp, there goes the rest of tonight’s practice…

***

It was already long past sunset when the two naughty spirits finally finished ‘playing’ together. The only light that illuminated our dark cave came from our campfire, although it smelled just as much of roasted raptor meat as it did of smoke.

Alice discreetly whispered to me that she wanted to sleep beside me again. While I had plenty of suspicions regarding her motives, for some reason I was glad she had asked, so we each placed our bedrolls down next to one another.

Even while I lay on my side facing away from her, I could almost feel Alice staring at my back in a way I couldn’t explain. Eventually I turned around to confirm that she had been staring, and her cheeks instantly turned beet red.

“What is it?” I whispered.

Alice fidgeted under her covers. “Beryl… how are you feeling?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” I mumbled.

Neither of us spoke for a while, only the sounds of the crackling fire breaking the silence.

Somehow, Alice worked up the courage to snuggle a little closer under my bedroll covers and reach out to me. “This doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” she said, gently running her fingers through my hair just behind my fox ears.

I stirred at her touch. “You know I can’t go back to the city like this.”

Alice stopped, staring at nothing while thinking something over.

“Beryl, before I met you… There was a time I was almost scared to death I would never learn magic in this world. And even after that, I never thought I would have a chance to study at the Academy this soon. But you made that happen anyway. That’s why, I… if I’m with you, I feel like anything can be possible. For all of us.”

My heart started racing in my chest. The breathing I had spent half the day trying to control came and went faster by the second. I noticed the scent of fresh berries and cream, like she had used one of her perfume potions earlier. Alice was so close I could almost kiss her.

She blushed a little harder and gave me a nervous glance. “So… um, can I hold your tail?”

What did she just…! Oh, God.

“That’s what you were after this whole time, wasn’t it?” I groaned.

“W-Well, I’m, I’m just asking!”

Her innocent curiosity almost made me laugh, and I had to admit, the attention was a little exciting. Why not?

It was still an unbelievably strange, new sensation having a tailbone that extended as far out over my butt as it currently did. Not only could I feel my fluffy fox tail, I could also move it around with a limited range.

No, it’s not like I’m wagging it as if I’m her pet fox! This is just… practicing something new!

I flexed my tail around my side toward Alice and tried brushing it against her legs. She shuddered like she felt something, then started reaching a hand down under my covers toward it.

When her fingertips finally found my tail, I ended up shuddering. Alice softly stroked my tail, first near its fluffy tip and slowly working her way up. I found my heart beating faster and faster all over again the closer her hand got to my butt—except she stopped halfway, dipping her fingers into my fur.

“Does that feel good?” she whispered in my ear.

It was hard not to quiver under her touch. My tail wasn’t even an erogenous zone, and yet… it was almost scary how good it felt for her to play with my new fur like this. I was torn between asking her to let go, and begging her to go on.

Before I could make up my mind, I heard Alice whispering something else.

“Beryl… You’re my foxy.”

“Wh-What?!”

“Just kidding~!” Alice giggled, pulling her hand back. “But, um… I think it’s okay if you stay like this…”

Slowly, she wrapped her arms around me in a warm embrace. I felt my heavy breasts squishing against her smaller pair when she snuggled a little closer, resting her head on my shoulder.

This girl… After all that, she wants to fall asleep like this!

I only realized then how exhausted I had become from all the day’s events. As I started to fall asleep in Alice’s arms, one unsettling question lingered in my mind…

But I mentally cast it aside and hugged her back.

Malonymous

Bonus art for today: more big thanks to SomeAspid for commissioning this awesome Alice lurking sticker from artist Hikari Yumeno!!

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