Devilla
"Are you truly sure you're alright with being left behind?" I asked, wishing to confirm once more that Lucy actually was fine with Abigail's suggestion.
"I really am fine with it!" she promised me with a soft smile. "This is a family reunion for you, too, isn't it? It isn't just a chance for me to ask questions! If you do things this way you can focus on the first part first and I can do my thing after!"
"It can hardly count as a reunion if I've never actually met her before," I pointed out with a soft frown. "And I don't expect it to be very pleasant either... You aren't the only one intent on getting answers tonight, you know? It seems she also has information on my mother, and her plans for me..."
"Plans for you?"
"Right... You weren't there for that, were you?" I murmured, recalling that it was prior to me telling Lucy the truth of things. "My mother supposedly claimed that I would be the one to stop the war, at least according to my aunt's drunken ranting. I intend to find out what she meant by that."
"Well, if you can get her to open up, then we'll both win!" Lucy pointed out. "But it's still starting out as just a dinner with your aunt, right? It's fine if you don't include me for that."
"I suppose..." I reluctantly agreed, eyeing the teleportation circle that would take me back to my room. "It just feels wrong to leave you here, eating dinner by yourself while we feast... Especially since I made you relocate to the forest after the...incident at the inn..." Was it free of rats? Probably not. But it was a matter of not knowing! Ignorance was bliss!
"You're sweet to worry," Lucy told me, with a quick kiss to my cheek that set my face ablaze, "but I'll be fine! I've had plenty of meals in the woods by myself before I met you!"
"I don't believe that's as good a point as you think it is in terms of assuaging my guilt..." I grumbled before shaking my head and moving towards the circle. "Very well. I'll be back to spirit you away shortly..."
"I'll see you soon!" Lucy said cheerfully as she waved goodbye.
And just like that I was gone, away from the dark woods and back into my brightly lit bedroom... Or at least I
assumed
that my room was brightly lit. I'd come to realize that I was actually terrible at telling the relative light level unless I intentionally focused on it.
"Oh good," came Abigail's voice, "you're back."
"Indee..." I began, only to trail off as I caught sight of the speaker.
It was Abigail, of course - who else would it have been, waiting in my room? - but she looked
very
different
from what I was used to. Gone was her maid uniform - or rather it was laying nicely folded upon my bed. Instead, she was wearing a bewitching backless black dress. Though it technically covered more than her maid outfit, going almost all the way down to her knees, the way it clung to her, and the absence of decorative frills, left even less to the imagination than usual.
"...Is it too much?" she asked, plucking at the tight hem and doing a quick twirl for me. "I didn't really know how formal I should be going for this, so I just went with my gut and picked out something nice from my closet."
"N-No," I said, my tongue suddenly tied as a torrent of competing compliments tried to jostle their way forward to reassure her. "It's... You look
gorgeous
."
"Th-thanks," she replied. I couldn't help but notice the red upon her own cheeks as she did so, as if my compliment had caught her off guard. "W-Well, I guess we should hurry up and join the others, then? I hear Chloe's Mom's a pretty big stickler for being on time."
"Right..."
***
The trip to my aunt's place went smoothly, if only because I'd grown used to walking through town in disguise while taking cooking lessons from Abigail. She apparently lived on the 47th floor in an area that looked closer to suburbs than the urban territory Abigail and her mother inhabited. The houses were a little further away from one another and grass and trees could be spotted between them.
"Is it just me, or is Chloe's mom
way
better off than I was expecting?" Abigail asked, looking up and down the street. "I mean, maybe you're not aware of this, what with the whole 'having a whole floor to myself' thing, but space is
kinda
at a premium when your entire civilization is stuffed inside a single tower. It feels downright
weird
seeing this much room between buildings..."
"Well, she
is
the Queen's aunt," Chloe pointed out, popping up from inside a nearby bush. "I'm pretty sure she got this place when your dam was still alive, too - guessing Aunt Issa didn't really want her sister living in relative poverty while she feasted on royal delicacies every day."
"Wha-why- why were you..." Abigail looked between the small bush and the girl stepping out of it, obviously confused.
"To surprise you, of course! Really, I'm just glad I properly predicted what street you'd be coming down. Makes the time I spent waiting totally worth it"
"Right..." Abigail sighed, shaking her head. "I guess this is your take on being a trickster?"
"Oh, you haven't even scratched the surface of that!" Chloe promised with a sharp toothed grin. "Honestly, I've been too busy acting like the responsible one to get any good tricks in of late. It's been starting to make me feel all icky and stifled... Not exactly planning to pull a ton of pranks during a big important dinner, though, so you can get that right out of your head."
"Just a minor trick or two
before
dinner, then?" I guessed, unable to help the smile that came to my own lips.
"Exactly!" Chloe confirmed. "You get it, cuz!"
"Cuz, huh... It's odd, to hear that word used in reference to myself. In truth, I never truly thought of family as something I could
have,
in this lifetime... the idea of people simply spending time with you and loving you because of who you are was a foreign one for much of my life."
"Well, you've got a whole bunch of family now," Chloe pointed out, her toothy grin shifting to a more mundane looking smile as she undid the partial transformation she'd placed upon her maw. "I mean, sure, it'll take time for everything to properly settle in - but like a big lump of sugar in tea, it's only a matter of time before you ever so slowly melt into the greater whole that is a properly functioning family unit! Or something like that."
"You make it sound like I'd lose my sense of self," I pointed out, frowning a little.
"Yeaaaah, I'm not the best at metaphors. Try not to poke at them too much, or they'll fall apart like a sandcastle before a mighty toddler's foot. My main point is that right now you're in the teacup with the rest of us, but you haven't actually made yourself one of us. You're forcing yourself to trust us, because you want what we're offering, but you've been by yourself for so long that it doesn't feel
real.
Unless I'm mistaken?"
