Lovers to Neighbors

This is a story about three of my characters, all of whom exist in a wider world alluded to but not completely covered here. Depending on the response to this one, I might very well write more, so: I hope you enjoy!

***

There were many kinds of dragons within the Domain, collected from worlds beyond measure, but they all came to rest there the same way. Whether kings or warriors, monsters or goddesses, each and every wyrm, each and every creature that ended up in the Domain had been deposited there from a ruined world in its last moments of existence, the very reality they had known blinking out behind them once they had slipped, oftentimes accidentally, across the threshold.

Seeing all you had ever known fall into the void and disappear forever tended to have a humbling effect on most.

The dragons of the Domain were rarely the same as they had been in their previous lives, only seldom did they remain the apex predators they had undoubtedly been in their home plane... but that was not the same as being without requirements of life. There were dragonkin of all kinds within the central cities and associated realms, but equally, there were those that sought out solitude, took territory that they defended with various levels of aggression. Tyriah, generally unfavorable to displays of violence within the borders of her Domain, let the larger creatures do as they may, assuming they only took their need for sovereignty so far.

For example, the Agrasha.

The name of their home world had long since fallen out of living memory, their current population having been born and raised in the Domain, the original refugees long gone. What was left of Agrashan tradition came more from genetic need than from the history of that dead land; hybrids of solitary dragons and tribal, community building orcs, their jangling and contradictory instincts made them somewhat hard to place within the interdimensional commune into which they had come. Many worked just fine as city-dwellers, but for those that didn't...

Well, it was one of many complicated factors that went into running the Domain. Emerald was new to it all, but she already didn't know how Tyriah managed it day in and day out. At the demoness' suggestion, she had taken to dealing with her own problems first, which included, much to her eventual dismay, dealing with a solitary Agrasha.

It wasn't her own issue either, but that of Chai, her partner and fellow dragon. She required a steady, low source of earth-aligned mana to keep herself empowered, something that was not in rich supply within the Domain. Mana in general was a constantly draining resource in this place, but finding some of the correct elemental type, located in an area that filled all the other requirements of a witch and a tea dragon left them with precious few options.

Which put them, quickly enough, into Hera's orbit.

'You'll do great, Em,' Chai kneaded gentle fingers into her partner's shoulders, seeking out the points she knew would relax the smaller woman's overwrought tension. Her tail caressed softly at Emerald's leg, the white mane that limned its green scales a resplendent brush against the witch's tanned skin.

'Just trust me, this won't be like, you know, like before,' Chai was loathe to bring up the particulars or proper nouns involved in before, but she needed to reassure Emerald all the same. They had come together to a whole new world specifically in the hopes that it could be different.

'I know. I know it's not gonna be... like Nora.' Emerald brushed her fingers through the thick brown frizz of her hair, smoothing out the chaos of the curls and, still tentatively after all these months, poking at the base of her horns. 'But I'm still new at this, too. I spent my entire life fighting for even a glimpse into other worlds, it took me years of study just to meet you, Chai... now I'm supposed to head out there and deal with thousands of people like you, none of which follow the same rules-'

'Take what Tyriah said to heart, Em. Look at the one in front of you, deal with that. The next step will come when it comes.' With a kiss and a soothing tone in her voice, Chai calmed Emerald's incipient anxiety attack before it had begun, almost picking her up in the process to stand the young witch on her own two feet. 'Hera. Shouldn't be overtly hostile, but I can't go because another dragon wandering into her territory isn't a good look. Even a minor wyrm like a tea dragon. You remember what the books said about Agrashan customs, right?'

'I do...'

'Then you'll be just fine. If things get hairy, you have actual magic now, babe! Show them what a witch of the Villegarde family is made of.'

'In the most high stakes apartment viewing in the entire world,' Emerald smiled.

'Worlds. We're thinking wider now,' pecking the witch on the cheek, Chai pushed her gently toward the spell circle the two of them had made on the floor, its lines glowing with real mana here in the Domain, nothing like the paltry sparks one encountered on Earth. To be around true magic again was a pleasure, and Chai let her gaze linger there for a moment, before returning it to Emerald.

'Good luck, hon!' The tea dragon waved, smiling as the magic began to work, and before she could reply, Emerald vanished.

***

All at once, the world around Emerald changed and shifted, a sensation that she felt sure she would never get used to.

The workings of true magic were things she was still getting her head around in general, the arcane far more... accessible here in the Domain than it ever had been on Earth. The sorts of spells cast out of hand here would have taken days of struggle to even begin to cast where she was from. Teleportation, for example.

She found herself now in a clearing, surrounded on all sides by tall, dark wooded trees, rising straight up to a horizon that featured, prominently, a snow capped mountain. Coming from the little, temporary apartment that she shared with Chai, the instant transition to this rare kind of open space shocked Emerald, left her shivering in the cool air. The sound of burbling water met her ears, issuing from the shores of a little lake some paces away, the water crystal clear and achingly beautiful.

A city witch all her life, Emerald immediately wanted to get closer and investigate. But that would not be appropriate.

Because, at the other end of the clearing, just a few feet away from where Emerald had entered, stood a house, stone wrought and towering. Its composition was rough, all natural, but the rock it had been fashioned from seemed expertly shaped and selected nevertheless. The grand, curving arch of the doorway fascinated in particular, constructed as it was of a single piece of gray stone, flecked through with white crystal and carved to perfection.

Not the sort of thing an amateur could make.

There was no door at the front of the house, which was a good sign; many Agrashan cultures looked at doors more as statements of intent than simple barriers. A door kept people out, declared that the things beyond did not welcome visitors. An open entrance suggested a friendly occupant. She was audible, moving about inside the stone structure, and so Emerald began her visit to Hera's property by frantically recalling what she had been taught about Agrashan introductions.

Taking a deep breath, the witch selected a log laid on its side a ways away from Hera's doorway, perched herself on it delicately, and began to wait.

If you were close enough to an Agrashan to hear them, it was almost a certainty that they knew you were there. Few beings could escape their sense of smell, and so the thing to do was not to assume one needed to announce oneself, but to find a place within their world, and understand that they would get to you once they had a moment. Emerald did her best to simply exist in the space, letting her gaze wander away from the house and to the sunny wilderness around her. Occasionally the suggestion of motion could be seen through one of the windows, a flicker of tail visible through the door, but for several minutes the witch was alone in the forest.

She had all that time to prepare, but when Hera finally did step out into the clearing, her sheer presence was still a shock to Emerald's system. Agrashan's were a hybrid of two large species, them being tall creatures was to be expected, but to actually stand before such a woman was another thing entirely; the instinct to keep her distance from Hera was overwhelming, and something that Emerald had to actively fight down for the first few seconds they stood together.

Easily eight feet tall if not more, Hera suited her home all too well. She herself seemed made out of earth tones, skin and scales a deep brown, shading to tan at her forefront and face. Spikes dotted her shoulders in an icy blue, not particularly large for her species, but certainly more intimidating than a creature that wasn't spiky. Horns in the same color curved away from her head in wavy lines, striated with edges that brought to mind spears designed to be driven into and then stuck inside flesh. Brown hair stood in fluffy swoops between those horns, running down her broad back all the way to the tip of the tail that trailed behind her in a careless arc.

The shape of her horns, the soft curves of her snout, the way her tail seemed to possess a mane of hair all its own, all these things reminded Emerald of Chai, kept her in mind of the fact that she had encountered women like this before.

Also like Chai, Hera seemed to like going around naked.

This was, at least, somewhat tolerable for Emerald when it was Chai, being that the former had been brought up in human culture and Chai's tea dragon form did not have many human sexualized traits on easy display. Her scales acted as covering for when nudity might have been distracting. Hera, on the other hand, was part orc, and that mammalian blood in her made her appear, at least to Emerald, far more naked than her girlfriend had ever been.

And of course, trying to hide her discomfort, the blush that crept onto her cheeks to see the towering dragoness, would be putting on airs, the sort of thing Agrashan's did not appreciate. Emerald tried, bereft of the norms that had informed her life in the human world, tried her best to meet Hera where she was, not ignoring the woman that shared space with her now, but not projecting any expectations that her presence should disrupt the peace here either.

Hera looked her over, her gaze treating Emerald as a part of the landscape, to be acknowledged but not obsessed over and, after a moment of recognition had passed between them, slipped down the side of her house to the pile of firewood there. Her tail slipped around a collection of logs, hefted them into the air, and the Agrashan ambled back inside.

She nodded at the visiting witch before passing the threshold, though, and this was as good a signal as any for Emerald to follow.

Inside, Hera's home did not resemble any human dwelling she had ever seen. The floor was bare, no furniture to be seen barring a fire pit built up in the center of the room. A pair of curving archways suggested further chambers inside, but the common room Hera currently occupied was nearly empty. Only a pile of stones carved into various shapes, some obviously functional for repairs, others decorative and only partially completed, interrupted the flatness of the floor plan at all.

Emerald's first instinct was to think of it as sparse, but looking at the woman busying herself in starting a fire, it seemed more likely to her that it had been made this way very deliberately, for the comfort of one and one alone.

The young witch did not think she could blame the Agrashan too much for that.

Hera settled a large steel kettle over the fire, then dropped to her backside on the stone floor. Her tail, long and sinuous, curled around next to her, almost enough to reach around to the other end of the room. As Emerald lingered in the doorway, the Agrashan flicked her eyes from the witch to her tail and back again, before tilting her head back and breathing a sigh of relaxation.

Agrashan tribes often did not do furniture as a rule, because...

Gingerly, as though afraid of somehow hurting the mountain of a woman, Emerald perched herself on Hera's tail somewhere in its middle, not too close but conversely not too far either. There was a soft layer before the inevitable Agrashan musculature, the woman's fur as welcoming and comfortable as any armchair. Had she not been sitting on a total stranger, it would have been simplicity itself for Emerald to make herself comfy there.

Hera did not speak for a span of time that Emerald found interminable but that, apparently, the dragoness herself was comfortable with. She busied herself with wrapped packages of hand-picked tea leaves, setting them to brew in the kettle before turning any of her attention to her visitor; even when she did, Hera did not speak. Instead, she leaned in and inhaled a deep breath, scenting Emerald as she sat upon her tail.

'I've seen many of the species that come here, enough to know their scents.' When Hera finally did speak, her voice was deep, feminine, and mellow. The voice of a storyteller with a bent toward the gothic and dark. 'But I can't recognize the type of thing that you're supposed to be, newcomer. My name is Hera, which I suspect you know already. Who are you, and what kind of a thing are you?'

It was not the sort of voice Emerald had expected, instead far more smooth and curious, aspects that soothed her jangled nerves some. Even so, she wondered for a moment how to respond; was her true nature verboten outside of her inner circle? Would it be better to simply be honest with the woman she was attempting open dialog with?

'Um, I'm Emerald,' she answered, forgoing her last name as Agrashan's had no use for them. 'And I'm... not really any type of thing other than myself, now. I used to be human, but-'

'Humans cannot exist within the Domain. You were cursed.' Hera narrowed her eyes, scented the girl further. 'An Ovis curse, but not one cast in anger. Too deep, but not sour. You did this to yourself?'

'Cursed by choice, yes. Humanity is the impediment to living here, not specific humans. Adapt, and you can live here just fine.' Idly, Emerald found herself probing her horns once more, only a few months grown in and curled up through her hair at the sides of her head. The change had not been easy, and the general... Sheep-ness of her new appearance, the fluffy bob of hair, long and furry ears, slotted pupils, were something she was still coming to terms with as a witch of the Villegarde family, but the opportunity to be a real witch instead of the vain cosplayer she had been...

Well, baa baa, in that case.

'And why have you come to my home, no-longer-human Emerald?' Hera placed one broad hand on Emerald's back, easily large enough to go from shoulder to shoulder. Her touch was gentle and warm, if overly familiar in a way Emerald wasn't used to.

'I come on behalf of my partner,' the witch couldn't help the little quaver in her voice, as Hera began to massage the bare skin atop Emerald's shirt. 'Chai. She's dragonkind too, so she didn't want to come herself, lest that seem territorial. We wish to set up a homestead on your land, make use of the mana reserve here.'

'And you thought I would not be amenable to an arrangement like that.' The kettle whistling, Hera went about the motions of preparing tea, pouring the thickly steaming stuff into a pair of wood-carved mugs that were so darling Emerald wished to own some for herself. She handed one to the young witch: 'I would not be, normally. I value my solitude, but not to the extent of pushing folk away if they come in good faith. You, I think, deserve a little attention in return.'

Emerald, ultimately, couldn't help her eyes wandering; there were only so many things within Hera's home to distract herself with before the broad and comely form of Hera herself took in her gaze. The giant woman was so very naked, and so very unconcerned with it, her body soft and inviting but obviously packed with muscle just below the surface; Emerald wondered to herself about the sorts of attention a woman like that could provide.

She didn't mean to stare, but that need for propriety was a deeply human trait of hers. Not one that Hera shared.

Smiling with a few more teeth than before and leaning back in repose, not coincidentally spreading her thick thighs open a little more, Hera tipped her cup back and took a swig of her drink, the motion serving only to uncover more of herself, display the rippling of the musculature of her arms. She watched her visitor's tanned skin go bright red, and just for the moment, let herself enjoy the attention.

'Drink up, Emerald. I don't do much by way of hospitality, but I like to think that what I do is pleasant enough,' Hera brushed a thumb across the witch's back, the touch holding an easy intimacy that did not often come from strangers. The tea she had served was strong, fragrant and hot, a pleasant counterpoint to the cool alpine air breezing in from outside. She watched Emerald try her best to cover her blushing cheeks with the rim of the mug, her eyes widening as the overbearing, yet entirely pleasant taste washed over her tongue.

'You're cute, you know that?' The tip of Hera's tail snaked over, its maned tip bopping gently at Emerald's thigh.

'I-I'm what?' Emerald stammered, her eyes glued to Hera's tail, cup clattering as she put it down beside her.

'Cute,' Hera looked away for a moment, then back. 'You should bring your partner. You need not worry about territorial ructions, but I will need to meet with the both of you first. Come tomorrow night, I can be properly hospitable and we can make a go of figuring out the details if she's acceptable. Not that I've any doubts that she will be.'

'Really?' Emerald exclaimed, not truly sure herself whether she was double-checking the invitation or the compliment.

'Yes, of course. You seem a nice enough sort, and you were polite enough to come to me on my own terms, respecting my people's customs... I see no reason not to.' Hera smiled. 'Bring your girlfriend on by. Let's see what fun we can get up to.'

***

Emerald had lingered in Hera's home for a little while longer before moving outside to teleport back home; there was nothing about the outside that was specifically required for the spell, it just... felt rude, displacing oneself from reality in someone's front room. Hera watched from her doorway, mildly interested as the witch, unpracticed in the sorts of magic she could do in this world, stumbled through the process of creating the spell; she waved before Emerald blinked out of existence, appearing...

Hmm, well, in the same room as Chai, though with her nose a mere inch from the neglected corner of their living room, back to the tea dragon as she waited. Was that better or worse than not getting the right room at all, she wondered?

'How did it go?' Chai looked up from the book she had been reading, brushing strands of white hair out of her face.

Her girlfriend paused before answering, continuing to stare into the wall. Chai had been good enough not to mention her current position, but even granted the opportunity to ignore it she stayed in place a little while before turning around.

'Well, either I got us an introduction with Hera,' Emerald said, finally. 'Or a date with her? It's literally impossible to tell.'

Chai nodded solemnly, placed a hand on Emerald's shoulder when she came to sit on the couch beside her.

'We are a mercurial lot like that.'

***

When Emerald and Chai returned the next night, Hera was nowhere to be seen, her home emptied and her land placid and still. The protocol was clear, however, and instead of looking, the pair sat side by side by the lake, chatting quietly to themselves as minutes passed and, in the simple calm of nature, Emerald felt herself relaxing quickly.