Monster Girl Quest - After: Slime Girl
Ferris Pearson wiped the sweat off his sun-kissed brow, tanned after quite a few days working in the sun.
His normally curly hair, chestnut brown and shiny, was messily stuck to his scalp from perspiration, and droplets of the stuff rolled down his cheeks, flushed red from hard work, making the subtle, mottled birth marks on either cheek more noticeable.
He looked at the wooden beam before him, appraising the nails he'd driven into the supple, fresh-cut oak, satisfied that his teachings had stuck and he'd adjoined the supporting beam to the vertical length of wood that was to support the corner of the nascent house.
He was just barely a man on that day in Ilias Village. Preparing to undergo baptism no less, even if he didn't fancy himself an adventurer.
He just saw it as something good and moral, as a devout follower of the Goddess like all others in the village.
And for their faith, Ilias brought ruin and death to their home. Razed it to the ground.
If it wasn't for Micaela and the Elves transporting the majority of the villagers to Enrika through means he still didn't quite understand, then nobody would've been left alive to return and rebuild.
That's what he was doing. Helping to restore the village, let it live again.
Though what it was going to be called now, nobody had agreed on. Because Ilias was not a name anyone was going to utter aloud here anymore.
In the months that followed the end of the war, he, like many others, had cast down the name of the Goddess and her 'teachings', after learning what she really was.
He'd gotten a little taller since then, gained some muscle tone from all his hard work, though he remained slim and of average height. Rebuilding the village had been good for his heart and his soul, feeling like he had some purpose after all the horror and lost faith.
He'd even been approached by a younger girl who offered her hand in marriage. Clearly he was handsome enough, and she was pretty. But she was not of age, and even if there was only a few years between them, it did not seem appropriate, regardless of what some others thought was traditional.
After all, blind service to the Goddess was 'traditional', and now the Temple Shrine stayed a pile of charred and weather-beaten rubble, left as a reminder of what had happened, and the villagers' newfound hatred for their old Goddess.
Green eyes scrutinised the joins in the wood some more, still feeling a little inexperienced, but the carpenters had taught him well.
He reached down to his belt, plucking a flask from the simple leather strap and bringing the neck to his lips, taking a swig of cool water to wet his chapped lips.
Out in the sun, working hard most days, had taken its mild toll on him, and he'd been told to wear a hat by one of the older women of the village. He'd listened to her, the simple beige brimmed leather hat keeping the sun off his face, but doing little to keep him cool.
His dark brown shirt wasn't helping much either, though the lighter grey of his long pants didn't get so hot.
Somehow, the black leather shoes he often had caked in mud and dust never seemed to get that warm.
This was normal work though, he didn't think he was overdoing it. Other men worked harder than he did, even before the War with Heaven.
Still, perhaps he should take rests more often. He didn't want to get heat stroke.
He sighed, and sat down on a pile of lumber next to the skeleton of the house he was working on. He was alone right now, other men who normally helped off getting more wood. He was fine with that, sometimes it was nice to be alone.
Of course, he wasn't ever alone for long, not these past few weeks.
He heard her before he saw her, a strange, quiet squelching, like a sodden hessian sack being rolled over the ground, mixed with the subtle burbling of water contained in a leather flask.
He turned around, and gave a thin smile of greeting to Lime; a slime.
Lime was considerably more animated when she said hello.
"Ferris, hey there~!" she called out with a sing-song tone and a bending wave. Picking up the pace and 'rolling' over, her half-melted thighs moving as if she were taking languid, loping strides, but she had no defined legs, the excess of her blue slime puddled beneath her, creeping along as the forward edges rolled like over themselves, fresh slime pooling forward like liquid dough being kneaded over itself.
Ferris did his best not to stare at her; she was a monster, and like most monsters, had no shred of decency, her naked, goopy form on shameless display; rejecting of the Goddess' teaches he may have been, some of the ideas remained.
Still, now that he knew of monsters in a better light, he couldn't help find her slim, curvy frame and voluminous chest beautiful, doing his best not to watch her breasts jiggle - and they jiggled quite a lot, even compared to her placid motions - and her partly-shaped rump bounce in much the same way.
Her face was vibrant, playful, large eyes shining gleefully, her mouth opened in a broad, happy smile, though there was an underlying hint of laziness to her expression, a carefree demeanour he'd come to expect from her.
The goopy hair looked like water droplets shifting and sagging in slow motion, like molasses, hardly looking like real hair. Sometimes the 'locks' of gooey strands sagged and split, merging with the rest of her body as they dripped slowly.
Her body was covered in smaller droplets that rolled down the denser goo that formed her curvy shapes, like thick sudor dripping smoothly down her frame. Thicker globs still seeped and rolled down the less defined parts around the mound of slime that formed her lower half.
Sometimes it was hard to pick apart her features, everything shades of a clear azure blue, her eyes slightly darker than the rest of her.
Sometimes her shape shifted a little, though her face remained consistent. After all, she had no bones, no muscle, nothing solid about her at all, a mass of living, thinking, watery goo that had a love of life and men.
Ferris in particular.
He'd long ago learned to hate monsters. Fear them, pray for their extermination. That's what life was like in the village. No one knew any better. No one wanted any better.
Now he did, and though he had been terribly wary of her when they first met, he'd encountered a few other monsters since then, and they mostly behaved. And of course, he owed his life, as did every human the world over, to the very Monster Lord he was taught to pray for the death of. Her, and Luka.
Ferris didn't know Luka that well. They'd met, they'd talked, and Ferris always thought the young purple-haired man was a little odd, but polite and outgoing. Ferris was fond of him, but ultimately didn't interact with Luka much.
It was still insane that Luka had set out to slay the Monster Lord with the Goddess' blessing, even if he missed his baptism. And now, he had fought alongside the Monster Lord to defeat the Goddess after she showed her true face.
If Luka could befriend monsters, make peace between them and mankind, then Ferris could play nice with Lime.
And Lime, for her flirtatious remarks, had been behaved too. She didn't push any lascivious idea on him, she didn't try to molest him, she was often quick to suggest something debauched, but in a playful way, and she seemed to respect Ferris' polite rejections.
It helped they had other things to talk about; with his hatred of monsters dead with the Goddess, curiosity had taken its place despite the healthy wariness, and she was all too happy to talk about what she knew... though he quickly learned she wasn't a scholar. Not a dolt, but hardly educated on monsters not of her own race.
Still, she knew a lot about fishing, she knew a lot about fish. Slimes were known to be carnivorous, even if most preferred human semen, but where they couldn't get that, they consumed other things.
Fruit was a staple, but even the less carnivorous slimes were happy to eat smaller creatures like fish. And she liked fish.
Apparently there was a small population of Slimes on the continent, in the low mountains near the village in fact. It's why they lived here, so far away from the Spring of Undine on Sentora, the heart of the slime race on Earth.
She taught him about Undine, and of Erubetie, the Heavenly Knight. She said Undine was quiet but really nice. She called Erubetie scary, but a good leader.
Lime learned quickly enough to gloss over the details about the humans Erubetie and the other, more dangerous slimes had slain. She was a bit clueless, but she saw the look on Ferris' face the first time, and her shame seemed genuine.
Thankfully, despite all the threat she herself faced from humans, the idea of killing them made her sad in a way that tugged at Ferris' heart... even if he knew she would've happily raped them for sustenance. Such was her warped sense of affection.
But he was being open-minded with her, and they talked about the land too. The weather, how slimes being present meant a water source was clean and pure.
And she liked to bring him snacks, her way of appreciating his hard work.
Today, she'd brought roasted fish. Normally, she'd just consume them as is, melting them down in her body, but she knew humans couldn't do that.
The first time she'd brought cooked fish had been... disastrous. She hadn't gutted the thing and just dumped it on a fire.
Ferris did his best to turn it down and explain why he couldn't. The second time, she'd prepped the fish, but it was almost burnt. Feeling sorry for her, he ate it, and his eyes had watered. He still remembered the taste of fishy char...
The third time, it wasn't great, overcooked and a little dry, but she'd shown improvement. And she kept improving.
Today, she presented him with a nicely roasted fish seasoned with rock salt, wrapped up in a treated sheep-skin wrapping she used to keep things she wanted to carry dry, hardly able to keep herself from soaking the things she held in her hands.
"Thank you very much, Lime... it smells wonderful," he praised, and he meant it.
She must have cooked it recently, wisps of steam curling off the roasted scales. The fish was missing its head and its tail, and had been filleted properly. He took the open wrapping with the fish graciously, and he laid it on his lap as he tore into the tender meat with his fingers. He had no cutlery, and he wasn't fond of the greasy feeling on his fingertips, but he at least knew present company wasn't going to be offended.
In fact, Lime watched intently, a look of pride and happiness on her face. She enjoyed watching Ferris accept her gifts, and hearing his praise for her improving cookery made her quietly squeal and shake, her whole slimy body rippling like a bag of water.
She'd even seasoned the inside of the fish... he wondered how she managed to do it so well when she was made of watery slime? She could hold things easily enough, able to finely manipulate the density of her mass to feel quite solid, but she'd always invariably leave moisture or residue behind.
However she did it, she'd shown her effort in making sure what she cooked wasn't just edible for Ferris, but pleasant too.
"So, how have you been, Lime?" he asked her between mouthfuls, doing his best to show manners.
"Oh, same same," she began, looking off into the woods listlessly, her body jiggling subtly with every little movement she made. It drew attention to her curves, and Ferris was conscious of it.
But not all that embarrassed, he found.
"Same same?" he echoed.
"I go fish, I wobble around. Oh, I play with my sisters! We wobble together, go fishing together, try not to get swept away in the currents. It's really inconvenient, you know. See if anyone's got themselves a cute human. They'd love to meet you, I'm sure!"
He wasn't quite so, Lime alone quite boisterous for being so languid and carefree. That being said, he didn't fear the slimes she spoke of, they were not known to do anyone harm on the continent, most of the dangerous slimes up in Sentora and Hellgondo.
All the same, he didn't want to rush things
too
much. He was comfortable with Lime.
