When Civ and I found the table that my party had gotten for us, I saw Dawn go quiet, her eyes sending a question my way. I tried to communicate to her with a smile that everything was okay, but she remained wary of the healer next to me.

The rustic but clean and high ceilinged inn common room was moving slowly, but I doubted it would remain that way for long. I could see regulars coming into the place by ones and twos, local workers seeking a drink after work.

To my friends at the table, I said, “Hey everyone, this is Civette. I’m going to come out right away and say that she was one of the people who took the bounty to try and kill Dawn and I, but it seems like her heart wasn’t in it, even during the fight.”

Taylor narrowed her eyes at the girl next to me, and Millie gave her a look that I meant the girl was probably one wrong move away from being discreetly poisoned as she drank with us. Rusti just smiled, not at all perturbed by what she had done.

“Well, not going to lie, it’s a bit odd to see you again, but welcome,” Dawn said evenly, and I breathed a sigh of relief as she followed my lead.

In the party chat, where Civ couldn’t see, I typed a message.

Tami: Go easy on her. I just found her out back, her mum was telling her off for failing to complete the bounty and get the money. She was crying and… well, self harming. I think she might need some friends right now.

After I got indications from the others that they would be nice, I sat Civ down at a chair and then placed myself down between her and Dawn. Dawn’s hand immediately found mine, and we interlaced our fingers absently. As I leaned back to relax, I noticed Civ staring the contact between my girlfriend and I with wide eyes and a startled expression. It was quick though, the reaction gone almost as soon as I’d seen it.

Millie and Rusti started up a conversation about the best ways to poison people, a conversation that was rapidly becoming more and more morbid by the second, so I quickly started one between the rest of us. We spoke about any random thing. The game and the politics that were happening.

We also asked Civ a little about her build, which she confessed was one she hadn’t even put together herself. Since she was playing the game because her mother had told her to, she had just found a build someone had put together online and went with that. It was fairly standard healery stuff, touch heals, a few area heals and some long ranged heals. What surprised me was the way she hinted that she had some game knowledge, but she wasn’t invested at all.

She seemed to know all about the broader politics of the game, such as Pagutum’s current assault on Joret, or their machinations within the region we were in. Although she only spoke up every so often, seeming a little intimidated and possibly anxious in our company.

So when I posed the question that we ask Civ to be our healer to the party in text chat, the others seemed cautious, but not opposed to the idea. Taylor proposed that we invite her along for the trip, but try and bait some local bandit players into trying to take us on. That way we could test her without revealing where we were going to go. If she passed, we’d head onwards to the doorway. Which meant I needed to actually ask if she wanted to come.

“So… Civette,” I began, turning fully to look at her. She’d seen us typing to each other, looking more and more worried as we did so. Before she could get too anxious about it, I asked, “We were wondering if you wanted to heal for us?”

“Wait, what? As in, join your party? Why would you want that, why do you even trust me?” she blurted, looking equal parts confused, amused and incredulous.

“Because we need a healer, and you could obviously do with some gear and levels so you can make money doing real money bounties, I guess,” I shrugged, a little surprised by her immediate reaction to question our trust in her.

She stared at us for several moments, her eyes flicking between the various party members, but mainly staying on Dawn and me. Her face was schooled into a carefully blank expression, but I could see her considering my offer through the windows of her eyes. Would she do it?

“Alright,” she shrugged, and it almost seemed like she was trying to play off her agreement as not a big deal. Like she was just doing it on a whim.

“You’ll be our healer? We’re going to be going on a bit of an adventure so there’s a time commitment and shit,” I said, trying to read her expression. I only got a single, subtle eye twitch as she stared right back at me.

“It’s not like I have much else to do these days, right? I quit college, because… uh, nevermind,” she told me with a bitter laugh. This time I got something from her as she spoke, a spark of sour anger flickered through her eyes.

What was up with this girl? She seemed scared and meek before, but now that she knew we weren’t going to hurt her, it was like she had an intensity boiling up from inside her. She was trying to hide her displeasure with her current lot in life from us, or at least the magnitude of it. I guess that made sense, when you felt angry at something, trapped by it, no matter how hard you tried, it would always boil out into casual conversation. Even with strangers like us.

“I mean, hanging out with potential friends is something to do right? Regardless of whatever else is happening,” Taylor supplied kindly from across the table.

That seemed to throw Civ for a loop. She stared at Taylor like my sister had just stunned her with a taser or something. Her hands were shaking as she twitched absently at her robes, and her foot bounced up and down against the rough wooden floor.

“I don’t really have friends anymore,” she finally murmured as all her shaking and bouncing stopped. “At least not real ones. Not how they get described in books or anything.”

“That’s… rough,” was all I could think to say as we all awkwardly made sympathetic expressions.

I wasn’t really sure what to say, we’d already offered to give her a go with us. Make friends, so to speak. One thing was clear though, we’d stumbled on a girl who was very hurt by someone or something, and that was something I was all too familiar with.

“It is what it is,” Civ shrugged after a few moments, her depressed expression being swapped out for a carefully neutral smile as she met my eyes. “I’m still happy regardless.”

“Well, I guess if you’re happy, then that’s what matters,” I replied with a careful smile of my own. I didn’t believe she was happy for a second. It sounded like she was trying to convince both me and herself of it.

The conversation moved on from there to help Civ with her build, although because she was following a guide, all that was really needed were a few high level monster kills before she was ready to heal with us. We could probably power level her along the way if Millie could figure out some sort of mob attracting scent or whatever.

Food came along, we shared it with Civ, and then it was time to take a look at this pocket house that Taylor had been mysteriously gifted with.

After getting permission from the innkeeper, we made our way out the back to where I’d found Civ. It was a reasonably large cobblestone courtyard, and perfect for our needs.

“Alright, supposedly this area is big enough to fit our house,” Taylor said with a snort as she searched through her inventory.

“Musn’t be the biggest house in the world then,” Rusti chuckled, looking around at the space before us. “Maybe like a capsule hotel or something?”

“I’m just going to summon it and see what happens,” Taylor decided, decisively pressing a button that only she could see.

Before our eyes in a spot a few meters in front of us, a tiny little house phased into existence. It was the size of an outhouse, but styled to look like a little old english cottage. The windows were set into the cobblestone walls, one on each open side and then one above the door, had an opaque gloss that was impossible to see through. Below those windows were little planters with flowers. The roof was thatched with thick bundles of straw, where moss seemed to have already found a home.

“What the fuck?” Taylor asked incredulously, while Millie gave a squeak of excitement.

“It’s like a tardis!” she exclaimed happily, rushing up to try and open the door.

The door didn’t budge, and she frowned and turned to stare pointedly at her girlfriend.

“Right, sorry… setting permissions up for everyone now,” Taylor said, before her eyes fell on Civ. “Well, except you sorry. Once we trust you, I’ll add you to the permissions.”

Civ just shrugged in reply, not seeming too bothered by it, much to my relief.

As soon as little Millie had permissions, she opened the door and was inside. Even from this angle, I could see that the outside deceived us. The doorway opened into a coatroom that by itself was larger than the exterior, and beyond that I could catch glimpses of an even larger room.

We all piled through the entrance, the coat room had hooks running in lines along either side of us, and light filtered in from a pair of windows up above them. The windows were frosted to the point where you couldn’t see anything through them, which I guess was on purpose because there wasn’t actually anything on the other side.

Through and into the next room, we found ourselves in a large room with a fireplace set into one wall. Flanking it were a pair of countertops that ran the length of that wall. I guess that was where we were meant to prepare food? The ceiling was moderately low, with large wooden supporting beams, that were still high enough to accommodate Taylor and her wings with a little breathing room. The girl was pretty damn tall in Cora, so it made sense that little May would build the place to work with her height.

The floor was bare, no furniture for us I guess, we’d have to go spend even more money for that. I was rapidly running out of what little funds I had, but I suspected that Taylor had more than enough to cover the cost of furnishing the place.

We explored the little cottage some more, finding a little spiral staircase off to the side that led up to two bedrooms in the loft area. We decided to put Rusti and Civ in those, since the cat person was rather small, and Civ was just your average short human girl. Taylor and Dawn would have had issues with the slanted ceilings up there.

The bottom rooms were cozy enough too, four of them down a little hallway, each with lime covering the outer walls and thick wooden walls separating the rooms from each other. I immediately made Dawn go into the room adjacent to ours, then I started yelling as loud as I could so we could test the thickness of the walls.

When she came back around, she was grinning, “Not a peep, apart from a general slight sense that there was some form of noise coming through. So long as you don’t scream like that, we should be fine.”

“I’d damn well hope you’re not making her scream like that,” Taylor said with an amused chuckle. “The only time I’ve ever heard her scream like that was when she was eight and I stole her little magical girl doll.”

“You had a magical girl doll?” Millie asked, staring at me incredulously.

“She looked pretty!” I grumbled, giving them all a half hearted glare for their teasing. “I wanted to be as pretty as her.”

“You’re much more pretty than any random anime girl now babe,” Dawn replied, pulling me into her by the waist and pressing a warm, loving kiss to my lips. Suddenly I was all noodle legs and needed to cuddle closer to her so I could stay upright.

“Just so you’re aware, I know what you just did,” I mumbled without any conviction.

Giving a triumphant wink to Taylor, Dawn asked, “And what was it that I just did?”

“You calmed me down with a kiss and made me all melty,” I replied, giving her a glare that was more than half smile.

“Hey, it worked didn’t it?” she grinned back. “I’m going to remember this every time you’re all agitated. Less than a week into an official relationship and I already have deescalation techniques! I feel like I should win an award or something.”

“What, like the nobel peace prize? You can’t just demand that you know, you have to actually do good things for that,” I shot back, but I was unable to hide my affection for this woman. Gosh she was special.

“Alright, that’s enough loving banter from you two,” Taylor said, rolling her eyes. “Where are the other two anyway?”

Like she could talk.

“Let me get them,” Millie said quietly, then causing all of us to stare at her in shock, she opened her lungs and belted out, “HEY CIVETTE, HEY RUSTI, COME BACK DOWN FOR A SECOND.”

There was a loud thump from upstairs, then some more thumps as two pairs of feet made their way to the stairwell and down the stairs.

When they came into view, Rusti’s tail was flicking from side to side and they wore an amused expression. “Sorry, Civette was just getting extremely confused by my gender. It was fun, she lost all ability to speak when I explained myself! I dare say I have shocked her. Shocked!”

Laying my head on Dawn’s shoulder, I gave a small exasperated chuckle.  Fuckin’ Rusti, I should have realised they would confuse the hell out of Civette. The girl seemed very innocent to the ways of the queer world.

When I looked up again, I found Civ’s eyes on Dawn and I, her eyes bugging out even further as she stared at me in particular. Her eyes ran over the way that Dawn held me close to her, the way I was leaning against her side. It was strange, but although I was all about being the strong punchy girl, I also loved just leaning on her in this very feminine manner. I didn’t have to be strong punchy girl all the time, although I guess the fact that I had a softer side probably confused someone who only knew me through my reputation.

Civette didn’t say anything outright, although her eyes held some potent emotion within them that I couldn’t discern. I was intrigued by this girl, I couldn’t lie. She was like some labyrinthine dungeon behind those eyes, hidden depths of personality and emotion extending down for layer after layer. As with May and Millie before her, I wanted to help her, to help her renovate those depths from a dark depressing dungeon into a bright and happy one.

“Anyway!” Taylor said, her tone commanding. “We need to stock this place up before we head out, so I’m going to get us all to go and buy the things we need. I’m not going to demand that you help pay for furnishing this place, since it’s technically mine, but I will ask you all to go and buy the supplies you might need. I’m talking foods you don’t mind eating for a while, clothing, that kind of thing. Each room has a closet, in case your inventory hasn’t been upgraded enough, and the pantry is there too off the main room.”

“I can help buying the furniture!” Rusti said excitedly. “I know some dealers who sell on the cheap and—“

“I think we’ll stick with nice, new stuff thanks,” Dawn cut in, her voice laced with amusement as she continued, “I’m not sure we should trust you with Taylor’s funds anyway.”

“You don’t trust me with her money? Why not?” the cat asked with genuine confusion.

“Do you really need me to answer that?” Dawn replied with a wry smile. “You are the same person who stayed behind in the throne room of a collapsing nation to steal all the jewelery off the panicking nobles.”

“Ah…” Rusti frowned, their ears wilting slightly. “You make a point. I don’t agree with it, but that’s your prerogative I guess.”

“Don’t worry,” my girlfriend said placatingly. “We’ll trust you with a portion of any new money we get our hands on.”

“I am suddenly feeling much happier,” they grinned, their tail sticking straight up happily.