Bridgette

“So now you’re saying I shouldn’t ask Firanna about her feelings?” I demanded, glaring at the maid who’d dragged me to the kitchen for a private conversation. “You’re the one who made me realize she has a crush on me to begin with!”

“Are you truly in such a rush to break her heart?” Clara asked, staring at me cooly.

“Well… No, not really, but the sooner we get this over with the better!”

“Even if it hurts her more in the end?” Clara pressed.

“That’s…” I hesitated. As a knight in training, I was supposed to be honest and brave, to protect people - but if being honest would hurt my friend, then maybe it would be better to wait… Still. “I can’t just let her live the rest of her life crushing on someone who has no interest in her!”

“And I’m not asking you to,” Clara replied. “I’m just asking you to wait long enough for her to share her feelings of her own accord.”

“She’s had over a decade to do that,” I pointed out. “Why do you think she’ll suddenly figure it out now?”

“Because my Lady has talked her into it,” Clara replied.

“Amy has?” I asked, blinking.

“Correct. She has convinced Firanna to tell you her feelings over a romantic dinner. A one-on-one dinner, in which she will make her best effort to convince you to see her in a different light. Don’t you think she deserves that chance? The opportunity to see her crush through to the end?”

“That’s… She’s just going to be going to a bunch of trouble to get her heart broken!”

“Perhaps,” Clara replied. “Likely, even, if you know your own heart as well as you seem to think - but still. If her heart is to be broken either way, at least let her make the attempt. Let her express herself and find closure, rather than simply shutting her down before she can even get a word out.”

“I… ugh.” I let out a groan, wishing there was a chair I could collapse into. I needed time to think, and for a moment I considered shifting into fast-mode just to buy myself some time - but there’d be a breeze, and Clara being Clara she’d probably figure out what I’d done. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing? It wasn’t like I was ashamed of needing to think? I just… “Ugh. Fine! Fine. I’ll hold off, alright? But if there’s any sort of delay to this dinner, I can’t promise I’ll keep my mouth shut!”

“Of course,” Clara said, smiling at me. “Now, about the matter of the hunt itself…”

“The hunt? What does a romantic dinner have to do with a hunt!?”

“I took the liberty of telling them that your favorite meal is monster boar,” Clara replied, matter-of-factly.

“How did you even know that!?”

“Lady Amelia kept tabs upon all her fiancee’s acquaintances,” Clara informed me. “And as her personal maid, I of course handled the actual discourse with her spy network.”

“You mean she treated you as a cat’s paw,” I replied, frowning. “If you’d ever been discovered, she would have told everyone that you were working on your own.”

“Of course,” Clara said. “I would think that was obvious.”

“And that doesn’t bother you!?”

“Why should it? I would have gladly given my life a hundred times over for Lady Amelia - I actually wanted to take the fall for trying to poison Miss Pauline, you know? But alas, the evidence was too iron clad. I would have likely ended up imprisoned as an accomplice, without taking any of the blame off of my mistress…”

“You’re insane. Why would you want to give your life for someone as horrid as her?”

“As opposed to someone as nice as Prince Jethroo?” Clara asked in return, arching an eyebrow.

“Henry is… I mean, he’s got some problems he needs to work on, but he’s usually willing to listen to reason! It’s just when it turns to matters of Pauline or Amelia that he gets a little… blockheaded.”

“He listens to you, you mean. He allows you to tell him when you think he’s wrong, and even sometimes acts upon it, and so you’ve convinced yourself that there’s actual good in him rather than just a desire to look good. But none of that is worth talking about, in my opinion.”

“Like hell it isn’t! We’re talking about my friend!”

“We’re talking about the prince you serve - or used to serve, at least. It seems to me that you’ve been focused more on the bidding of the king, of late - not to mention your attempts to appease the whims of my Lady.”

“He’s not… I mean, we’re friends. We just… disagree fundamentally on a few things that have kept us from talking lately…”

“If you say so,” Clara replied, shrugging. “But really, I must insist that we return to our original discussion - about the hunt.”

“The hunt for a monster boar?” I asked, putting the pieces together. “You’re sending them out to hunt a monster for this dinner? Without me?”

“Lady Firanna will be more than adequate protection, in all likelihood. And even if she isn’t, I have her recruiting Pauline for healing. Add in that potion the demon gave my Lady, and she should be in no danger.”

“Ah…” I grimaced. “I uh… about that potion… I might have um… handed it over to the king?”

“…You what?” Clara demanded, narrowing her eyes at me.

“It’s a pitch-black demonic concoction that did who knows what to Amy the last time she drank it!”

“It kept her alive long enough to be healed, is what it did!” Clara snarled back.

“Well, yeah, but what if it did something else we don’t even know about? It needs to be studied. Tested. We don’t even know what’s in it and you want to feed it to Amy? Even if you don’t care about her you’re still treating it like Amelia’s body, aren’t you?”

“That’s… I suppose you make a valid point,” she begrudgingly admitted. “Still, the security measures I’ve arranged should be enough… And if they aren’t, you could always arrive in the knick of time to save the day as her knight in shining armor.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘arrive’?” I asked. “You can’t possibly be saying that I should stay behind?”

“Of course!” Clara replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You can’t hunt your own romantic dinner - it would ruin the whole point.”

“The point being for Firanna to tell me something I already know?”

“We’ve already discussed how important this is to Firanna,” Clara replied. “Do you really want to rehash the argument, just because you’re worried about Amy hunting without you?”

“That’s… I’m not… I mean, yeah, I’m a little worried, I guess, but…”’

“But nothing,” Clara said. “You can listen in from a distance, can’t you? At the speeds you travel, there shouldn’t be any trouble with you dashing in to the rescue at a moment’s notice.”

“I guess not,” I agreed, begrudgingly. “But what about me telling Amy that I sort of-”

I snapped my mouth shut at the sound of the kitchen door opening, an oblivious Amy waltzing in.

“There you two are!” she said, a bright smile on her lips. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

“Is that so, my Lady?” Clara asked, shooting me a meaningful look.

I sighed, but ultimately nodded - I’d follow along with Clara’s plan. Telling Amy how I felt about her could at least wait until I’d given Firanna a chance at closure, after all. I mean, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get together with her - not when she was engaged to Firanna. I just needed closure of my own, I guess.

But it could wait a little while longer.

“Yes,” Amy said, completely oblivious to the thoughts rushing through my brain. “After our little tiff this morning, I got a bit lost and ran into Pauline - and then later Firanna came up, and… and… Well, apparently Pauline told Prince Jethroo that she likes girls - still don’t know what that’s about - but she must have been very convincing, at the very least, because last time I saw Jethroo she was-”

“She?” I interrupted.

“Perhaps you better start from the beginning?” Clara suggested.

“Right, well, to start with, I’m still a little angry about how you two treated me this morning,” Amy confessed, “but I suppose stress really did add to my reaction at the time… I mean, I stumbled out there without any idea where I was going, and before long…”

I nodded along, listening with rapt attention. Or at least trying to.

Was it my fault I kept getting distracted by how cute Amy looked when she got all excited?

***

Amy

***

The rest of the schoolweek passed by at a dull trudge - though it wasn’t without its highlights. Firanna came home to express that she’d met with her ‘sister,’ for example, only to find out that I’d already told everyone.

Thankfully, she seemed to find the matter more amusing than anything - especially once she found out that the princess had been temporarily enraged and then paralyzed by the concoction of a student alchemist.

As for how the rest of the school took the news… Well, I didn’t share any classes with the princess, and I wasn’t exactly keyed into the local gossip, so most of what I knew still came from Firanna. She was more than pleased to report that Jethroo’s new looks had caused waves amongst the student body, and that she’d already been forced to deal with a few of the braver boys attempting to woo her. More for political gain than anything, according to Firanna, but the obvious discomfort on the princess’s face as she was forced to politely turn them down was apparently quite a sight to see.

Unfortunately the king had already left for the capital, and was not on hand to deal with any of this - though I wasn’t entirely sure what there was to deal with. Jethroo wasn’t like me, after all - she hadn’t been shoved into a body that was already female, but had instead changed her own form. She was doubtlessly dealing with al sorts of dysphoria and regret - in fact, I wasn’t even sure it was right to call her ‘her’ at all - though apparently that was what she was going by, so I’d stick to it until told otherwise.

Still, I was sure the king would eventually return to talk sense into his child. Changing forms for the sake of chasing a woman… for someone who wasn’t trans - or stuffed into a cis female body like I’d been - it could only end in disaster.

Regardless, it wasn’t really my business. Of much more importance to me was preparing for the upcoming trip - though, really, I fell a bit short, there. There just wasn’t much for me to do now that I’d recruited May. Firanna had the healer situationship well in hand, according to her, and she’d repeatedly promised not to draw Pauline into anything against her will. May was already recruited as our alchemist. We’d probably need to stop by the guild in order to find a quest, at some point, but Bridgette advised me that it was best to wait until we were actually ready for the hunt, so that there’d be less chance of our information being out of date by the time we were prepared.

Mostly, I just ended up focusing my schoolwork - though there was one other thing on my mind: the last subspell for my tentacles. I’d been stuck for a while, torn between something that would let me stick, and something that would add strength. As it was, the only reason I could even lift a child of Bean’s size was that she’d used a spell to lighten her weight. Specifically by making herself as light as one of her bubbles.

I could conjure suckers on the tentacles, in much the same way I could do eyes - but just as I couldn’t see through those eyes, I couldn’t seem to stick to anything with the suckers. It just wasn’t part of what the base spell was designed to do.

Honestly, I was about ready to tear my hair off over the matter - but then, the night before we were to leave, I finally found my solution. It was so simple, in fact, that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t gotten it before! If I was torn between stickiness and strength, then I simply needed an image that would represent both in my mind.

The answer was practically right in front of me - in fact, I was literally staring at a line of it on the ground when it came to me: if I wanted both, then why didn’t I just draw an ant?

~~~Author's NotesFun fact - I finished this just in time for my gameIn fact, I'm listening to the theme song for said game as I type this. So uh... gotta go, bye!

(Will say this is another chapter I didn't entirely plan on, though - I was gonna just imply that some form of conversation happened, but with how excited people were over Actual Communication in chapter 27 I felt the need to address it getting delayed a bit.)