"Alright, your hair is all good." I mutter softly in Ava's ear as I wave the hairdryer a few more times, blowing her beautiful, thick, crimson hair around. It's amazing, Chaos damn it. Like her flames, come to think of it. Similarly red red.

"Alright." My girlfriend replies, looking at me from the corner of her eye. "Gimme the dryer, I'll take care of yours. We'll get to our tails later."

"Mmm." I mumble, turning off the dryer and handing it to her.

Before she can turn around though, I push my face into her hair and inhale a deep breath of nature and embers oozing off her. How does that even work? Her smell is now much more pronounced and richer than it was before the shower, while logically it should be the exact opposite.

...Not like I'm complaining. This is smell is sorta... both soothing and exciting at the same time, and I'm not sure how to explain that. But I love it.

"Vesper?" I hear a soft, amused voice. "You can purr all you want, but I can't dry your hair like you're now."

"Mmmrh~." I reply and shake my head a bit, then pull away and turn around on the floofy seat, and a moment later I hear the wheeze of the hairdryer behind my ears and I feel gentle wind brushing them and blowing my wet hair around. And Ava's slim fingers brushing my hair...

As wet as my sad tail, which is a little... disheartening. Ava's tails are the same, and it's a Chaos damned chore to dry them. The effect is very much worth it, as I learned on my own tail, but the fact that Ava's can contain good fifty liters of water speaks of itself.

Today is actually the morning two nights after we came to Percula, and Ava's tails were the reason we put off the bath till now. If you ask me, I wouldn't mind taking two baths in a row, but Ava is the responsible one and she claimed that we should take care of some things before we spend half a day drying our tails.

Shopping, for one, because we had almost no clothes in this house. We never came here before for longer than a couple of days, because we had no reason to stay longer, and almost everything that remained in Ava's room was either far too small to fit us or in absolutely disgusting in my opinion style, bought by her parents and left there for some reason.

Even those few that fit and looked good were unusable because of our changes. Including bra, because I wasn't mistaken in the fact that Ava got curvier and more... puffy, I think? It's a slight difference, but noticeable if you're holding her boobs, no matter if you're me or a bra.

Now we have some clothes, tailor made by a local Aranea, so a spider, to suit our new figures, and especially my legs. I didn't get any boots, as my feet are similar to those of Half-beasts and I don't really need boots, but I did get proper shorts and even trousers suited for my new legs and tail. Love them. Legs and tail, I mean, but the trousers are also nice, even if they cover my legs more than I would like. Wasn't it kinda backwards just now...?

"Say, Vesper, what do you want to do today?" I hear Ava's voice, which tears me out of my toughts and throws into another rabbithole.

Hm, what do I want to do? Normally we'd go to the Academy, but we agreed there's no point in going there anymore. Not to mention that the one in Venus doesn't exist anymore, which means we would need to go through all the procedures, tests, and a whole lot of other things to start learning in another place.

Where could we go even, that's not... hm.

"Um, when's the purple alignment?" I ask my girlfriend above the sound of the hairdryer.

"Today, I think?" She replies uncertainly. "My sense of time got a bit messed up, so I'd need to make sure. You are asking because of the ruin in Palermo, I assume?"

"Mhm." I nod my head lighlty.

I'd like to see the place for myself, because it tickles my interests. I'm the type of girl who cares much more about exciting and interesting things than any kind of routine or consitency, which is another reason why I never really liked school. I can learn about what interests me for days and not get bored, but I'd rather skip lessons and laze around unproductively than sit on an hour-long lecture about something I'm not keen on.

"We'll see. I don't mind going there, at least, but there will probably an absolutely ridiculous number of people in the first few days." Ava replies, grounding me again. Damn, what I would do without her. "The ruin will open tomorrow either way, so it still doesn't answer what do you want to do today."

"Mmmh, I dunno." I mutter. "A date? Sex?"

"...I wouldn't mind either." Ava replies after a while of silence and I grin, hearing the blush in her voice. "But I think the latter would require another bath afterwards."

"Mmm. A date then?" I ask, catching the hidden meaning.

"Sure. Anywhere you want to go?" My girlfriend asks me back.

"Not really... I don't remember much of what's here. Let's try something exclusively for the Touched?"

"Hm, I know a nice place then~." Ava says melodically. "It's not exactly for the Touched, but I think you'll like it, and we wouldn't be able to that before."

"Surprise me." I tell her with a smile.

"Mhm. Let's dry our tails first, and then we can go." She continues running her fingers through my hair, blowing air on it.

Mmmrh.

...

"You like it?"

"Yeah! I love it!" I reply to my girlfriend enthusiastically as I jump up and sideways and grip the wall of stone. When I look up, I see the grass on the edge of the cliff. "I always liked climbing, but this is so much better now!"

I look down at Ava, who is right now below me, and let go of the wall. I start falling and spinning in the air, and a few meters down I whip my tail around and turn in the air, then grab the stone and sharply stop in place next to my girlfriend.

She looks at me with a soft smile and slight tilt of her head, the same smile she always makes when I'm goofing around, and I grin in response. It's our date after all, and we're far past the point where we need to be remotely formal on those. For us a date is more like a time just for us to enjoy ourselves, I guess.

"We'll be there in a moment." I tell Ava, who is steadily climbing up in more conventional way, unlike my jumps and waves of tail. She is still fast though, much faster than any normal human would be. Even with her seven tails, which are by no means light, she can easily lift herself up with one arm, unlike before when she had trouble doing that repeatedly with two arms.

She nods her head and I dash off with a grin, flying at least two meters into the air and holding onto the stone at the highest point. I repeat it a few times, each time feeling the amazing rush of air and the wightlessness in my stomach, till I arrive at the top of the cliff.

Wow. I immediately stop in place in amazement. I've seen the Veil many times, but seeing the edge of the Mists up close always leaves an impression. Well, up close... I've never been really up close. But now I can see the Veil much better than usual.

What lies in front of me is a large stretch of mostly flat land covered in light green grass. The larger plants can't grow properly this close to the veil, for reasons I'm not entirely sure about, so all there is before the Veil starts are the grasses. At some point around... eighty miles from here, I think, but I can't really measure, the Veil would start on the barren land.

But all I see now in the upper and middle parts of the veil, former of which is a mostly uniform white with occasional, dynamically changing coloring. Now with a universal tinge of purple because of the shortly approaching alingment. The lower part of the Veil in not far above the ground and currently behind the gentle hills, but the middle part, which looks like massive multicolored tentacles in various colors, mostly purple, can be seen above the green of the ground.

What's amazing about this view is that the middle part of the Veil ends about fifteen miles above the ground, while the upper part extends along the whole sphere we live up to the other side... if you can say up when you're moving on the inside of a sphere. There are various theories as to why the Mists behave like they do, but there is no clear answer, or at least I haven't heard of any supported by solid evidence.

Fact is that this whole stretch of land is more of a massive sphere void of the mists, not an island or whatever.

I break out of my trance when I hear soft breaths and scrapes of nails on stone behind me, and I whirl around to my girlfriend. As I look down the massive cliff, I spot her a meter below the top of the cliff, and I bend down to give her a hand.

I grin widely when she holds my hand, and her eyes widen a moment in realization before I grab her other hand and pull her up. And over me while I spin around looking into her eyes, and she whirls her tails around instinctively and lands on the ground softly behind me.

"...Could have warned, furball, but okay." She mutters, letting go of one hand, but a moment later her face splits into a grin. "It's amazing how we can do that so easily."

"Yup!" I nod enthusiastically. "Three minutes for a seventy meters tall cliff. I counted."

"You know I'm not talking about that." Ava rolls her eyes in exaggerated manner.

"Mmm, yeah, but that too, 'kay?" I tilt my head and pull my lips into a dot.

"Yes, yes." She grumbles, but shakes her head a moment and breathes deeply with a soft smile, looking out from the edge of the cliff.

We drop the topic under an unspoken agreement, and I turn to the edge of the cliff as well, finally admiring the view. It's a lot more... lively than the other.

There is Percula, obviously, a city of the Touched situated in a valley with cliffs on both sides, falling in the same direction. A very peculiar thing about those cities are very wide streets and buildings suited for much larger people. Beasts, mostly, but there are also some huge Half-beasts and Demi. This makes the cities much larger than they would be for the same number of ordinary people and sort of divided into sections of various sizes.

And purposes, because Beasts neither need nor want most things humans do. What I can spot, for example, is a massive open hall on the edge of the city, which serves the Beasts as a place to sleep and rest. Apart from that there are the usual skyscrappers, blocks, and houses.

That's not what makes the view unique, at least not in itself. What makes it so lively are the Beasts and Half-beasts we can see even from this distance, some of them I assume to be in class 3 so large they tower over most of the buildings in the area, excluding the skyscrappers.

"It's amazing how the people here live together with the Beasts." I mutter.

"Yeah. Venus' restricted zones were really annoying." Ava replies quietly and pulls on my arm lightly till I take a step to the side and lean on her body, when she wraps her arm around my waist. "We won't be able to go into them now, huh?"

"Well, I don't really mind." I shrug lightly. "Remember that quote? When you survive the Touch, you don't merely gain something new. You become a whole another person. This matches our situation, doesn't it?"

"Mmm, how exactly?"

"Well, for one, I was a human student, rather knowledgable, good at martial arts, and without a goal in life. Now I'm a Vulpes and I've a goal in life, so that alone changes a lot." I explain, snuggling up to my girlfriend.

"You've a goal? I haven't heard about that." Ava asks curiously and I nod my head.

"I wanna get stronger. When I was a human... Chaos, that sounds weird." I mutter. "Anyway, yeah, when I was a human, I could only hone my abilities, but I couldn't go past the limit all ordinary humans have. But now I can truly get stronger to protect you."

"Ah." Ava lets out a puff of air that tickles my ears. "Your motivations never change." She says dryly.

"Never." I confirm, nodding sagely.

"What makes you think I need protection now?" Ava asks in amusement, reaching out with her hand to rub my ears. "I was Touched as well."

"Well yeah. But that's the exact reason, because you're now not a human student, but a beautiful Vulpes with amazing powers. So you're gonna draw more attention, attract people who want to use you, and no way I'd let them do that." I explain with a smile and snuggle deeper into Ava's side with my head leaning on her bosom, inhaling her scent.

Nature, embers, like the smell of fire in a lush forest, with a tint of something else coming from behind us... wait. I immediately tense by reflex, but I relax my body to appear like I didn't notice anything as my ears idly whirl around and I try to filter sounds around us in search for something suspicious.

That's because a smell of city, of sweat, of recently washed clothes, with a few other mixed in, which I notice comes from behind us, definitely doesn't belong to Ava.

If we couple that with the fact that I don't hear absolutely anything, and I haven't smelled anything suspicious before, we have a pretty... exciting situation.