Witch of Chains

** Amelia **

I was lucky enough to wake up before the Witch, so I was able to catch the little fox when she woke up. Not because it was adorable watching her struggle back to consciousness, but because I’d thought there might be a few moments of panic on her part, and I needed to be ready to deal with it.

It was pretty clear now that the Witch was beyond broken inside. She had a lot of trauma going on, and goddess damn it, I actually cared about her already. I wasn’t going to slap any labels on what I was feeling, we’d barely known each other for a few days… but it had been a good few days.

Anyway, point is, as soon as her eyes fluttered open all sleepy like and saw where she was, she started squirming and letting out a terrified squeal. I scrambled to put my arms around her and hold her tight, struggling against the sound as much as she was against me. It was a heart rending sound too, tearing at me like someone had stuck a chainsaw in my gut and I just had to sit there and let it tear up my insides.

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay, it’s okay,” I murmured as she cried and struggled. “Shhhhh, everything’s fine, it’s just me. It’s just Amelia.”

“Amelia?” she rasped, her thrashing coming to a slow stop.

“Yeah, that’s me. Just hugging you, nothing bad is happening,” I whispered gently, running a hand through her delicate hair.

“Hugs are shit,” she said, sounding foggy and confused.

I gave a hum of disagreement. “Is this one bad?”

She paused for several moments, like someone taste testing a dish they were already unsure of. Her frown deepened as she lay in my arms, before she give a sigh and rested her head back down on my shoulder. Her ear landed in a way that tickled my neck, and I had to clamp down on my own reactive wriggling. Little secret, I was incredibly ticklish.

“Okay, this hug might not be that bad,” she agreed after a moment.

“That’s good. I’ve been told I give pretty good hugs, but if you like it, then that’s the best endorsement,” I said soothingly, raising a slow, careful hand to run my fingers through her tail fur again. She’d liked that last night, so I hoped it would calm her down further.

“Alright,” she replied warily.

Damn, this woman was fucked up in ways even I wasn’t. What on Earth had happened to her?

“So I have something to ask you,” I said slowly, unsure if I should even broach the subject right now.

“What is it?” she asked in alarm, wriggling out of the cuddle a little to look at me.

She stared at me like I was going to tell her I’d just killed her cat or something, before her ever present poker face slammed down again.

I powered onwards, just getting the question out before she could get too wound up. “I can’t call you Witch when we’re in Joret, so I was wondering what I should call you. We should also add each other as friends in the game.”

“Oh!” she blurted, the tension she’d just built up easing, and she lay back down on top of me again like I was just another mattress. She was quiet for several long moments before she said in a soft, tentative voice, “My name is Rosa.”

“Nice to meet you Rosa,” I smiled, enjoying the fluttering happiness that learning her name brought to my chest. Rosa. I liked the name already.

“Oh, uh… thanks,” she whispered from my chest. “It’s my real name… but it doesn’t matter.”

“I forget my real name sometimes,” I said sadly. Not because I forget it often, but because it’s a reminder of what I can probably never have.

“Why?” she asked, confusion in her voice.

“Because I’m in storage,” I said, unwilling to elaborate further.

I didn’t want anyone to know… I didn’t want them to have that little seed in their mind. The seed that always whispered, she isn’t genuine. People didn’t care about the science that said otherwise, they didn’t care when the vast majority of health professionals said I was real and needed help. They didn’t care when people like me died by our own hands, overwhelmed by the mental anguish that bombarded us day in and day out. No, they saw someone who wanted to change their body, and their stupid little lizard fucking brains decided it was their right to stop us from doing anything about it, from fighting to live.

“I considered going into storage for a while,” she whispered, pressing her cheek into my shoulder and rubbing for a little. Was that… was she nuzzling me like an actual fox?

I didn’t reply, the subject was too raw and too real, so I just lay there in silence and held Rosa some more. Rosa. Her name just brought a smile to my face every time I thought it. I wonder what would happen if I said it?

“So uh, Rosa… I think we might be able to make it to the front today. This is your last chance to back out I guess,” I said, before blurting, “Not that I want you to back out. I’d really like your company, I’d really like to hang out with you a whole lot more really.”

“I’m not backing out,” she mumbled, her big tail batting at me grumpily.

“Okay, okay, stop bopping me with your tail,” I sputtered as it moved up to whap me in the face repeatedly.

She made a considering noise that sounded alarmingly like teasing, then gave a huge mock sigh, “As you wish. I will stop bopping you... as you described it.”

“What’s wrong with the word bopping? It’s an accurate description!” I protested, only to receive another whap to my face from the tail.

“As you say,” she said haughtily, shifting to straddle me so she could pin me with a look from her dark purple eyes. “I prefer to use the word… whipping.”

My eyebrows shot off up into space as she spoke, and suddenly I was feeling rather small under her gaze. She kept me pressed against the wall of our snow hut with her eyes, before allowing them to roam a little across my face. What was she thinking behind the dark mist that swirled in her irises?

Her face was close to mine, and I swear it was inching closer with every second. Her breath hot as it caressed my skin, and the warmth was more than welcome. I watched her lips as they parted for a moment, they were small, because she was small in this form, but they were nevertheless full. I ached to kiss them, so much of my body working together into a desperate desire.

“We should get moving,” she murmured, her eyes lidded and oh so seductive. “We don’t have much light to work with.”

“Yeah, we don’t want to waste any daylight,” I agreed, my hands coming to rest on her small waist, the rest of my body not making a single move to get up.

“We might even be able to make it to a warm bed tonight,” she whispered, her lips just a few tantalizing inches from mine now.

We stayed like that, staring into each other’s eyes that were now made indistinct and blurry by our closeness. The tips of our noses brushed feather light against each other, and all I could think was how just one little movement would bring us together in a kiss I had found myself wanting more and more with each passing moment I spent in her company.

Then she suddenly backed away, her eyes going bright and excited. “I can finally get a bowl of good ramen! Oh my god! There are actually so many good reasons to hang out in the Taeru. Why didn’t I think of this at first?”

I had to play her words back in my head again, because fuck me was that some whiplash! What had just happened? I swear we were about to make out, and now the girl is getting excited about eating ramen? Whoa, I think my brain was backwards right now with how spun around it was.

I shook my head to get my brain pointing the right way within my skull again and coughed, “Right… ramen… we can definitely get some of that once we’re back, yeah. The Artifisuki make some great ramen.”

“I know!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I was trying to sneak in and get some when the Pagutum assault happened. It was really frustrating. I haven’t had like, proper cooked food in forever. I was actually thinking of logging out to go and cook some at home, but that’s even more effort.”

“You can cook?” I asked, intrigued.

“I’m passable, if I have a real kitchen. None of this roughing it over a fire garbage though,” she told me with an adorable little grumble.

“Well then let’s get you to a real kitchen,” I grinned, giving her waist a squeeze.

Her eyes flared slightly as I did that, and she looked down at how we were positioned. It was very intimate, I had to admit there. I enjoyed having her like this though, close and cuddling or closer and alluring. She was gorgeous in whatever form she took, but inside… there was a person in there that I very much wanted to get to know.

“Which means I need to get off you,” she stated dryly.

“Which means you need to get off me, yeah,” I said with regret.

She frowned and nodded, like she was making a difficult decision, and then pushed the furs off us completely and moved backwards out of the way.

“I’ll get some food out of my inventory,” she murmured, an odd edge to her voice, like she suddenly wasn’t feeling so good.

“Alright, I’m going to check outside really quickly,” I replied.

I burrowed out of the snowy cocoon and carefully looked around, finding us alone in the wilderness that had gained an extra two feet of snow overnight. Snow was pretty when you got it every once in a while, but when it was all you knew for months at a time, it began to lose its appeal.

We ate a quick breakfast of almost tasteless dry rations from Rosa’s inventory before we set off through the wilderness again. Suddenly ramen was sounding like an actually good idea. Good food, along with the fact that she’d given me her name was still echoing in my mind. Rosa. There she was, sitting in my friends list.

We travelled within eyesight of each other, but far enough away that as she rushed from shadow to shadow in her smoke form, I could deny knowing her if we chanced upon anyone. Rosa would then run away, circle around and meet me again in her fox form.

I’d let my guild mates know I was coming back with one extra too, so they wouldn’t be surprised when two of us showed up on the doorstep. I hoped they liked her, and they had better be kind or I was going to get real fucking angry. The type of angry that burned bridges and hurt feelings, but that didn’t matter, because Rosa needed to see she could trust at least one person in this shitty universe.