This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

Isra felt like objecting, because she’d had those thoughts, but it wasn’t like she’d actually been in heat. But apparently that wasn’t something that happened to women, and men presumably didn’t have any rutting behavior, so it was possible that the thoughts that had entered her mind were just the normal levels of desire that people had, and acting on them was natural, if the kind of thing that people just didn’t talk about.

“I think I might be done for now,” said Isra, standing from the chair. “It’s… thank you for the help, with the guild things, and the other, but—I need time to think, on my own.”

“Of course,” Hannah said. “And once your thoughts are in order, I’d be happy to talk with you again, especially over what you feel and how to handle it. You should know that for people your age, it’s not always so clear how to grapple with these things. This is universal, more or less, figurin’ out how things are for you.”

“Thank you,” Isra said again. She was feeling warm toward Hannah, grateful in a very tactile way, like she’d been rescued from drowning. It felt good to be told that she was perfectly normal, especially after she’d been corrected on what felt like a fairly major misunderstanding about human mating.

Isra brushed her teeth with the miswak twig, used the bathroom, and went to bed. Verity was already there, in a nightgown but not yet asleep.

“How did talking about guild things go?” asked Verity. She had a small bottle of something beside her and was rubbing something white onto her skin. “Lotion,” she explained. “Helps to keep the skin nice. Would you like to try some?”

“Sure,” said Isra. She came over and sat next to Verity and rolled up her sleeves so she could apply some lotion to her arms.

Verity talked for a bit about lotion and the regimes that she’d used back in Dondrian, different soaps and ointments that were meant to keep the skin perfect. Isra listened, but she also kept her eyes on Verity. Everything that Hannah had said echoed back and forth through Isra’s mind, like a wave of thunder.

Eventually, Isra went back over to her own bed, and they shuttered the lights.

It took Isra some time to fall asleep though. She kept running things through in her mind’s eye, trying to test how she felt about them, as Hannah had asked her. She imagined nuzzling Verity, or kissing her, or their bodies entwined beneath the sheets. It caused her to be possessed of a restless energy and made sleep come slowly.

There were some ways in which cooking for quite a few people was more work than cooking for one, but an aspect of it that Mizuki hadn’t considered was the work involved in transporting raw ingredients. Not buying them, since that was easy enough, but if she wanted to bring home enough food for the five of them for the next two or three days, the pounds really started to add up, enough so that her large, trusty bag was digging into her shoulder. It was also hard to cook for five because it seemed impossible to make enough that there would be leftovers for the next day, which meant cooking was something that needed to be done every day. When she’d been alone, if she didn’t feel like cooking, she could just live off the same pot of stew for a few days.

Something was going to have to be done about it, but Mizuki didn’t quite know what. It was making cooking into a larger part of her life and in the process making cooking perhaps a little less fun. So far as she knew, none of the others could really cook, so it wasn’t like they could be depended upon to take up some of the slack. Hannah was the exception, and Isra seemed like she wanted to know how to cook, but… well. Mizuki was keenly aware that this was a problem of her own making. She had offered to cook and said that it was no problem. She had dismissed help with elements of the work where help would be appreciated. She had no idea how she was going to say, ‘Oh, actually, some days I just won’t feel like cooking’, or ‘I know that I waved off your suggestions that I take it easy, but actually I shouldn’t have done that’. It seemed awkward and unpleasant to do that.

“Mizuki, so good to see you’re intact,” said Marta, who seemed to be genuinely happy that Mizuki was there for market day. “How was the second dungeon for you?”

“Oh, it was an adventure,” said Mizuki. “We fought a bear the size of a house.”

Marta waved a hand. “You’ve got to be more realistic with your exaggerations, no one is going to believe that.”

“Very much not an exaggeration,” said Mizuki. “We really did.”

“And how would you have beaten such a thing?” asked Marta, giving Mizuki a raised eyebrow.

“By sucking all of the magic out of the room and breaking our bard,” said Mizuki. “And then having Hannah rush in to double the damage and nearly get herself killed.”

“Well, you be careful,” said Marta, frowning. “Dungeons don’t get very dangerous until you’re higher elevation, so if you’re having trouble now, it might be a sign that things aren’t for you.”