"Why did you come running out of the house calling for me?" Titus asked later that night.
"I don't know. I just had a strong feeling you needed me," Alise replied with a shrug. She sat on his lap as they enjoyed the heat of the fireplace. It had become her favorite place to sit after supper. Although tonight, her usual butt wiggling to get them both aroused was absent.
"I think I owe Goddess Saili a heartfelt thank you."
"You think it was her?"
"I'm almost certain of it."
"Alise, We haven't slept in the same bed since the inn, and I understand it's to keep us from being tempted, but I could use some company tonight."
"If you need me tonight, you can have me, Titus. You're hurting, and if I can make you feel better, then we can come up with a different reward for finishing your training."
"I appreciate it, and I very badly want to take you up on that. But I think I just need your presence and to hold you in my arms tonight more than making love." Titus noted the stirring in his pants and frowned, "Though I think someone disagrees with me."
"I'm just glad you still want me after all the frustration I've caused," she said, shifting in his lap. "I'll join you, but I'll be wearing underwear, and they will be staying on."
"Understood."
---
Titus awoke in the middle of the night to Alise's lips on his cock. Within a minute of his waking, she had extracted and swallowed the contents of his balls and curled up in front of him again while he recovered.
Before he could ask why, she said, "You may have wanted to keep tonight chaste, but once you were asleep, your friend had other ideas and nearly got inside my underwear. I figure that should put him to rest until morning. Now go back to sleep." Taking his hand, she put it on her bare breast before scooting around to get comfortable.
Titus could hardly complain and gave her a gentle squeeze before they both nodded off.
---
A light dusting of snow covered the field as Titus held out his hand and spoke the final word of the fireball incantation. He felt his mana drain into the spell before a spark of fire flew from his palm into the sky.
The spark reached the end of its travel and exploded with a pop that would have made a firecracker proud.
"Grrr," he snarled. "Why is this so damn difficult? I've mastered damn near every spell below this, but I can't cast a damn fireball? What the hell?"
"I don't know," said Alise, coming up behind him holding a basket containing their lunch in her mitten covered-hands. She looked cute in the leather coat with a fur-lined hood to keep her ears warm she wore over her brown dress. Much to his disappointment, she had begun wearing leggings and boots as the weather turned colder. Though the change in wardrobe gave his cock more time to rest, he missed her casually flashing her sex and bottom at him. "When you used the shout spell in town, you didn't seem to have any problem with distance."
Titus shook his head. "That was different. My voice just passed through the spell's amplification. Everything that happened afterward was just physics."
"You put a lot of importance on this magic-like 'physics' from your old world."
"It's not magic, but a set of rules that govern how the world works around us. My shout spell created a pressure wave, and that was what blew the mayor's clothes around and hurt their ears."
Alise seemed momentarily lost in thought before saying, "Oh."
"Oh?"
"Are you following the spark like the book said?"
"Yes. I've watched it every time."
"Not with your eyes, with your will."
"How do I follow something with my will?"
"By seeing the spark as it flies and using your will to keep the spell's magic inside it. If you don't, the magic bleeds away before it reaches its target."
"That would have been handy to know earlier."
"Your shout spell made me think you already understood that."
"That's fair."
Titus held out his hand and cast the fireball spell again with a similar result.
"All the spells you've learned target things you are touching or near to," said Alise. "Enforcing your will at a distance is difficult at best." She held up the basket. "Take a break, fill your belly, and try again."
He snatched the basket from her while wrapping an arm around her waist. Alise squeaked as he pulled her close and kissed her. "You're too good to me."
"No, I'm not," she said, slipping out of his embrace and taking the basket back. "I'm impatient." She pulled the heavy, quilted cloth off the top of the basket to reveal two lidded ceramic crocks sitting in bowl cozies.
Not long before coming to Calar, Titus had seen someone at the office use the quilted, cupped bowl holders for the first time to keep from burning their hands pulling lunch out of the microwave. Alise used them all the time since they often ate out in front of the fireplace now instead of the cooler dining room, and soups and stews were the perfect meal after spending most of the day out in the chill fall weather.
The pig girl said a quick incantation and sat down on a round, floating platform that appeared beside her. Titus did the same before taking the lid off the crock and placing it in the basket while also grabbing one of the two spoons lying inside.
Alise didn't do things like create the magical seat back when he first arrived. Back then, she reserved her magic for more important uses. But since she and Titus began getting intimate, using her magic had become a common, almost trivial, occurrence. When he asked her about her casual use of magic, she claimed that a handful of spells a day was all she could manage before he arrived, so she needed to be cautious in case a real emergency arose. But now, despite casting many more spells over the course of the day, even though they were mostly cantrips, she didn't feel any noticeable drain on her mana anymore.
Casting Fireball was the only spell tapping Titus's mana with any significance, but that was expected. The Hero was supposed to have deep magic reserves to draw from.
They ate the stew inside the crocks in silence as Titus turned over the conundrum of ranged magic in his head. Would it help to imagine a barrier containing the fireball's spark as it traveled away from him? Maybe see his will as the barrel of a gun or cannon? Or maybe as a mini black hole, constantly drawing the mana inward.
Alise returned her empty bowl to the basket and watched as Titus finished his meal. He sat there for a minute with the empty crock in his lap, staring off into space until she took it from him and placed it beside hers.
"I have an idea," she said.
"Please, I'm all ears."
"When you aren't thinking about magic, you think a lot with your cock."
"I feel you are partially to blame for that. You turn me on, you know you turn me on, you enjoy turning me on, and so, you do it as often as you can."
"I happily admit all of that, but you can't blame everything on me."
"Very true. Even without your help, it seems like this body gets wood at the slightest breeze," said Titus, frowning at the tent forming in his pants just from thinking about Alise's teasing. "It's almost like when I went through puberty in my old body."
"My idea was to use that, kind of like your incentive, but a little more direct," she said, placing the basket on the ground.