Things did not get better.

“H-how about if I call you aunty?” I said, sure my cheeks were hotter than the water.

She hummed, but it was very close to my ear and very distracting… so I missed what exactly her head was doing over my shoulder. “It’s okay, I didn’t grow hair down there until I was… twenty-two?”

My knees slammed together, hand shooting down. I, well, I may have tried waxing—so I could look my best when university started. The thing is, and I’m sure everyone does this, I thought, like, It can’t hurt that much. The other thing, you only discover that yes, it bloody well can, after you’ve put too many wax strips on.

So, yeah, I couldn’t argue with her for, like, two weeks about my “hair down there”.

Fortunately, my humiliation ended there and maybe the gods—but not God—were fair, because she washed my hair for me. Her fingers felt so good, gently massaging my scalp, combing through my hair.

So good that… I may have let out a moan. A small one.

She just chuckled, but even that hurt. I knew she still saw me as a child. Sappho knows, that wasn’t what I wanted. Honestly, though, since she saw me as a child, I would have hated her doing anything to me. I mean, like, if a, what, ten year old girl came up to me and told me she was an adult—I’d be disgusting to do anything, right?

The time in the bath let me realise that, so I didn’t feel so bad about how she treated me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it still sucked, but I understood she wasn’t doing it on purpose.

Besides, I wasn’t exactly making it easy for her.

“You don’t like any of these?” she asked, practically pouting.

I tried not to look so guilty, but it was hard. “I, um, get sick easily when I try new foods.” Why did I have to be a fussy eater?

Well, in my defence, fruit looks weird. When was the last time you saw a new kind of fruit? And these were fantasy fruits. One was so black I swear it made the room darker, and it had tiny hairs sticking out, and it was, like, a brain, all lumpy.

“I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t like blackberries before,” she said and popped one in her mouth.

Cringing, I turned away before she chewed. Like, I didn’t care how sweet and juicy she said they were, I was never trying one.

In the end, we settled on a veggie porridge. I thought porridge was just an old-fashioned breakfast, and I had no clue you put vegetables in, but she promised to cut them up small so I wouldn’t even notice them. I wasn’t so spoiled that just knowing it had weird things in would stop me trying it.

Maybe one upside, she didn’t let me help cook. “I’m sorry, it’s all cutting and I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” she said. Fine by me.

For actually cooking it, she started a fire in the fire pit. I was a bit worried at first, but the smoke went out a weird chimney thing in the ceiling, maybe the first bit of metal I saw. Anyway, sitting in front of the fire was nice. I never really did that in my last life.

“Don’t touch it, okay?”

“I know!”

Fine, maybe it’s still kind of annoying.

It wasn’t just the fire that was nice. Her pyjamas were really snuggly and a bit big on me, and they smelled really nice…. Yes, I sniffed them—is that a problem? It’s not like they smelled like her. She told me they were her old pyjamas… from when she was a tweenager. That’s when she was in her twenties, not when she was a tween. I’m not that small. For a human woman, I was, like, average.

Anyway, her old pyjamas were snuggly, the fire was toasty, and the bath was warm, and I had a really, really, long day, what with the getting hit by a truck and talking to God and everything.

So, um, she woke me up for dinner.

Not helping.

Thankfully, the porridge was okay. She probably put some of those blackberries in it, because it was a bit sweet, but I managed to finish the bowl. Kinda weird, we used, like, a strip of wood instead of a spoon. Good thing the porridge was so sticky.

After all the other embarrassing stuff, using an outhouse instead of a toilet wasn’t that bad. There was even toilet paper, just it was beige napkins. That worried me at first. I thought, like, it would be all rough. So I let out a sigh when it didn’t sandpaper my… cat. That was when I realised that paper obviously isn’t naturally white. Really, kind of a waste to bleach toilet paper.

Then “Aunty” told me it was bedtime. It was getting dark. To brush my teeth, she gave me a stick of boiled wood. I stared at it for, like, a minute before she tapped me and pointed to herself. Copying her, I chewed the end, then brushed with the frayed bits.

Still ended up with bits of wood in my mouth that I just couldn’t spit out.

The bed wasn’t really comfortable, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable, if that makes sense. Kinda like lying on a fluffy carpet. The blanket was super snuggly, though.

“Sure you’re okay sleeping on your own? I know this must all be scary, so if you want to sleep together, I don’t mind.”

That offer went straight to my gut, tingling. I stopped my gay tongue in time—obviously, she didn’t mean it like that. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. I’m just in the lounge, so call me if you need me.” She smiled, then slowly closed the door, like she was giving me a chance to change my mind. But I didn’t.

The thing was, I already had a nap, so I wasn’t tired at all. I also had… a lot to think about. Her long, long legs, her soft chest—oh Sappho, she picked me up, didn’t she? So strong.

After holding off for ages, I gave up and gave in. A hard-learned lesson, I always put a towel down, but I checked around and only found spare clothes and bedsheets.

Joking to myself, I thought, She’ll probably just think I wet the bed.

I was too into it already to stop, so I got comfortable on the bed and hoped for the best. It wasn’t like I always made a mess. Hardly ever, really. So I closed my eyes and thought about Aunty.

A well-practised routine, I started with just rubbing my boob through the pyjamas, other hand pulling off the bottoms before I messed them. After a bit, I swapped to the other boob. Already, a moan tried to slip out, but I held it in.

Warmed up, my other hand teased my… cat. Not going straight for the “nose”, but scratching behind the “ears”, and my other hand started, like, kneading my boob.

Aunty was fresh in my mind. I might have felt guilty thinking of her like that, but I was too horny to care right then. Her long, long legs—oh Sappho, I wanted to kiss all the way up them. And her hands, those long fingers, a little rough, imagining just how deep they could reach. And after, how nice it would be to sleep on her chest. I mean, even Sappho said boobs make the best pillows, and Aunty definitely had a comfy pair to try.

Squirming, I finally gave in and slid a couple fingers into my cat’s “mouth”, coming out slick. Then I rubbed the nose, a jolt of pleasure making me tense up, every muscle squeezing. Once it passed, I rubbed some more, feeling the heat pool in my gut, my breaths quicken, and I couldn’t stop every moan from slipping out.

Nearly there, I imagined Aunty on top of me, naked, telling me, “Good girl, you can cum now, it’s okay.”

The first wave rolled through me, quivering, and I breathlessly moaned out, “Aunty!”

And the door creaked open, Aunty saying, “Oh baby, did the food give you a sore tummy?”

I froze. She finally saw me, and she froze. Let me say, the bed faced the door, and I had my knees up, and my fingers were still buried in my cat. I don’t know how good elves can see in the dark, but it wasn’t a big room and there was some moonlight, and she might have seen my cat… glistening.

As long as it felt, it was probably only a couple seconds before she turned away. “Sorry, I’ll make sure to knock from now on.”

With a long creak, the door closed… and another wave shuddered through me as I thought about what she saw. I was, um, maybe becoming a masochist….

Anyway, since it couldn’t possibly get any worse, I went back to… petting my cat.

Then the door opened a crack and a box slid inside. “Sorry, here’s some tissues.” The door shut.

….

Since I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep easy, I made sure to really tire myself out.

When I woke up, it was already pretty light outside. I mean, I was eighteen, so sleeping until lunchtime was pretty normal for a day off. But there was no Internet, so I probably didn’t stay up that late. Once I actually got up, I checked and saw the sun, like, halfway up? So midmorning.

Aunty wasn’t around when I left my room. Just, like, a cottage, I knew the way to the outhouse, so I sorted that out, then drank some water from the jug in the kitchen, then found the drawer with the weird toothbrush-sticks.

After that, I sat by the fire pit. It obviously wasn’t on, but there were ashes and a cooking pot with the lid on still hanging over it, smelling like some kind of soup or stew. I tried to get closer and noticed the fire pit was still hot. Shuffling around, I finally saw that it wasn’t a pile of ash, but actually ash on top of a big stone. It was hot enough that I couldn’t even get close to touching it.

“Ah! Careful!”

The shout gave me a fright and I nearly lost my balance. But I was an adult, so I didn’t fall over. That didn’t stop her from grabbing my shoulder and jerking me backwards, falling right on my butt.

“Are you okay? Did it burn you?” she asked, holding my hands right in front of her face.

Seeing her, I suddenly remembered last night and where my fingers were—fingers that were now basically touching her face. “I-I’m fine,” I said, trying to pull my hands back, but she was way too strong, so I had to wait a few seconds before she let go.

She sighed, her wrinkled forehead smoothing out. Then, after looking at me and my, well, guilty face, she maybe remembered last night too. “Of course you are. You’re such a big girl.”

I rolled my eyes and moved back to the couch—more like a padded bench. Then I discovered it could get worse.

“About what you were doing last night,” she said, sitting next to me.

I cringed, face scrunched up. Sappho, please stop her! I prayed.

“It’s perfectly natural to… be curious about your body, and explore what makes you feel good. I just want to make sure you’re not going to hurt yourself. You should check your nails don’t have any sharp bits, and stop immediately if you feel like your nail caught on something. And you should try to go potty afterwards, otherwise you can get a sore bladder.”

Sappho, please kill me now!

“If you need more tissues, I can get you as many as you need. And I know it can sometimes be… messy, so I’ll leave a towel in your room and you can put that under when you’re… experimenting. If you want to try using, well, there’s special toys you can use. Some go inside you, some feel good to… rub against. If you want try them, I can ask a friend to buy some from the town. They are a little expensive, though, so if there’s something… specific you want to try, you will have to tell us. You can always write it down or draw it if that’s more comfortable for you.”

Funnily enough, that made me less embarrassed, instead thinking how there was no way they sold mini vibes here. And then I realised what I’d thought and got depressed. Oh Sappho, please give me my little friend! I prayed, but she hadn’t come through with the killing me, so I knew it was hopeless.

To cheer up, I thought of what I could ask for. What would Aunty’s face look like if I asked for one of those, like, horse dildos? Or a dragon one?

“Well, let’s leave it there for now, but I do mean it—it’s perfectly normal.”

In a better mood, I felt like I could try and get back at her. “Really? So even you do it?”

Unfortunately, she didn’t look bothered at all, just softly laughed. “When I was a bit older than you, I did that a lot. Once you’re an adult, it can get a bit boring. That’s why it’s nice to find a partner: you can show someone else what you learned, and you have someone else to learn about.”

Honestly, that was really sweet. Maybe because I was still a virgin, I thought of sex as, like, what I was already doing but better. What she said made me realise there would be another person there. Even if I didn’t know who yet, there’d be someone else, and they’d want me to touch them different from how I touched myself.

Well, we’d both be women, so probably not too different.

She chuckled, stopping me thinking. “Sorry. I know it’s embarrassing, but it’s important to talk about and, the more we talk about it, the less embarrassing it is.”

I shook my head. “I already know most of that, but I don’t mind talking about it.”

I was maybe trying to sound mature saying it like that… but she just chuckled. “What a clever girl.”

Trying not to pout, I turned away from her. “My name’s Isabelle.”

“Izabal?”

“I-sa-be-lle,” I said.

“Isabelle?”

It was nice hearing her say it, but it was a bit… I wanted a mommy, not another mummy. “Actually, call me Izzy.”

“Okay, Izzy.”

Smiling, I thought that sounded much better.