Everyday Life with Bubbles Ch. 18

The salamander's scales flared lightly, cooling her skin, as she finally began to see the pain of the other woman. That following rules to the letter of the law was not just stubbornness, but the only thing that was keeping the woman together.

"I will light the pyre, of our king." Erientyara dismissed the woman, so that she wouldn't find herself doing something stupid. Like forgiving her existence.

---

Ruel collapsed panting onto the mess of blankets on her bed, right beside the door into her tiny apartment. Her tongue hung out her mouth, and her palms were sweating like crazy.

She absolutely hated her apartment, but it was the only one that she'd found last time, and that was not a hunt that she wanted to repeat.

The man who had accompanied her looked around the space curiously, before gingerly sitting down on top of a nearby sack. She gave a small growl, and he stood up quickly. "Eh... Not a seat?"

She rolled off the bed and fell to the floor. "No seats. You have the bed. Just let me catch my breath."

"Thanks." He replied nervously, and carefully sat down at the edge of her mess. Ruel didn't think she'd ever smelled him so nervous, before. She wanted to cuddle him until he felt better, but she had been learning to hold herself back.

Humans... And basically every non-dog race... Found that kind of affection tough to handle.

For reasons she didn't remotely understand. If someone was being too in-your-face, you just give them a playful nip. They back off, and you go back to being friends.

Twenty years of life and living beside people who weren't her litter mates, and she still didn't get why anyone would hold a grudge for something like that. All she knew is that they really, really, did. Especially the nekos.

Ruel shivered as she remembered the hissing, clawing, and screaming from the one time she'd nipped a catgirl for getting too close to her food.

The woman yawned, stretched, and climbed up off the floor. She crossed to the sack that Jessop had tried to sit on, and untied the top. Then she proudly leaned the opening towards him, and announced, "Sparklies!"

"Holy shit." He stared in awe.

She shrugged and waved to the other three sacks in the room, "That one has rubies, that one's sapphires, and that last one is coloured glass. There's others, too, but they're under lock and key, right now. So... Which do you want to see, first?"

"I think... I'm wondering why you still buy any." He scratched the side of his neck nervously.

She did the bag up with a little disappointed huff, and then jumped onto the end of her bed. She barely resisted biting and shaking one of her blankets, trying to be civilised or whatever stupid thing that humans called it. "I like things that shine. It's what makes me who I am. Like you like tattoos."

He looked down at his arms, "Oh, these? Nah. These are mostly enchantments. Stuff to help out with work and shit. Mining isn't the world's easiest job. Collapses happen all the time. And there's the gas pockets. Which is way worse. Can't smell it, just start choking to death without realising."

"I have worked the mines." Ruel rolled her eyes at him, "Well, if you're not interested in my shinies, then we should play a game! I've got sztuczka and stones. Mmm... I also have a six pack. Want a beer?"

Without waiting for an answer, she jumped up and skipped happily across to one of her cupboards. She opened it and took out two bottles that had been nestled among some icestones, biting and spitting the metal caps off both, before knocking the door shut with her knee.

Ruel handed him one of the frosty drinks before digging a metal mug out of her bed and pouring hers into it. She felt him watching, and whined, "I can't drink like you. Have to scoop with my tongue."

"I know. I've drank with you plenty of times. Not why I was... Distracted." Jessop said with a strained voice.

She cocked her head, "Mmm? So, what's wrong? You're my friend. We can talk."

"That." He indicated a toy buried in among her blankets, and she instantly went bright red, and buried it under a blanket.

Ruel looked anywhere but in his direction, "I'm allowed."

"Not criticising. Actually, with what you've told me about being in heat, I'd call it downright responsible." He shook his head, "It just... Hard not to look? I might not have a heat cycle or whatever, but there's some things a guy can't help but notice. Like a woman in a nice dress, or a succubus on full display, or... A toy."

She nodded nervously, "Don't think I get it. But I'm not mad. Just embarrassed. So... What game do you want to play? Oh! We're alone. You can ask all the questions you're not allowed! Me, too! Like... Why do people get mad if I kiss their cheeks? That's just how to say hello! Or not liking being sniffed? That's just weird. How else do you know where someone's been?"

"We ask, if we really want to know." He shook his head, "But... I've never asked you where you've been. Might ask how work was. Or if you made it to a recent party or some shit like that. But... Why do you need to know where someone's been?"

Ruel shrugged, "So we have something to talk about. You might smell like the mine and frustration, so I know you've had a hard time and to be sympathetic and cuddly. Or you might smell horny and frustrated, so I know to set you up with whatever girlfriend is with me. I don't get how you could live without that."

"I... Don't think I want to know how I smell, right about now." He gave a small laugh.

She put a comforting paw on one shoulder, desperate just to hug him. "The same, since you first talked to me, tonight. Like hot and angry tears. Frustrated. Little lusty, but not too much. Hurting bad. Like heavy stormclouds that just can't drop their rain, all they can do is go boom boom and make everyone howl."

"I got dumped." He sipped his beer, "Tania. She... Sorry. It was a sex thing. She's a succubus. I should have seen it coming, right? But... I didn't. So I've been trying to drink away the pain, and that's a real shit way of doing things. You just get broke."

Ruel gave up patting him and fully embraced the man. Snuggling into his side and kissing his cheek twice before settling against him. "I'm sorry. I wish I could make it better, but I don't know how. When I get sad, I play with my sparklies, or when I get mad, I use Cohen's forge. But my emotions are always... Simple. I don't know how humans feel. Everything always complicated."

"Yeah, complicated." He sighed, and leaned his head briefly against hers, "Easier to pretend not to be feeling. Hmm... Did you only do the bicycle thing for the queen?"

She heard him running away from his sadness. She really didn't understand human emotion. She could grieve, deep and bad, for days. However, humans could do it for years, and still eat. Still live. She couldn't get that. Doggirls would just starve to death, if they were in that kind of pain.

Ruel hugged him tighter, "Bubbles? Yeah. She laughed at me. That's one job I really don't think that we're going to get. Avician came by, about five minutes after the neko left. Oh! Bubbles didn't hiss at me, which is something. All catgirls hiss at me. I don't get it! I just want to be friends!"

"That's... Kinda why they hiss at you." Jessop chuckled.

He still smelled like pain and agony. Distracting him hadn't worked. Dragging him away from the tavern to come and play with her, hadn't worked, either. Ruel was running out of ideas on how to try and cheer him up.

"Talgadil comes in all the time. She's weird." Ruel opted for talking about one of the customers, "Always claims to be an expert in everything. And always reminds me that she comes from Beeglesquawk. Like I'd give a fuck. Nothing shiny or interesting about it."

Jessop gave a small chuckle, "Oh, that one? She tried a drinking competition with Frank and I. She got maybe halfway through a brimstone before going face down."

"Brimstones are big and heavy." Ruel nodded, "I heard a rumour that Princess Ink doesn't get drunk? Probably just an exaggeration, but I heard she once drank eight in a single sitting. Don't wanna meet that neko in a pub!"

The miner winced, "Fuck. The princess. Do you think she's okay?"

"Heard something about both of them escaping on a ship." Ruel said, regretting bringing it up. The stupid coup had a way of ruining everything. Even if it had resulting in an exotic ruling her own city, instead of an overly fat king who had always smelled like he'd shit his pants... Something she hoped wasn't over, now.

"Sorry. I'm a bit of a downer, today." Jessop shrugged, "Nice of you to show me your collection, though... But I don't think I'm ever going to find something you're missing."

"Firestones!" She yelled loudly, and then flushed and looked down. Mumbling, "I've only got the nine. And my necklace, that I'm getting tomorrow. But nine! I found six of them, all by myself! I went down into the deep. Found and cut them, too. Which fucking sucked. They blow up, if you do it wrong! Burnt my paws!"

He chuckled, "You know, I've only ever seen firestones at the market. No way I could ever afford one. And I'm not insane enough to go down that far in the mine. How did you survive the heat?"

"Water! Lots and lots and lots of water!" She grinned proudly, and then scampered over to a cupboard. She pulled on the handle, and tugged it so it strangely pulled out, then turned it back and forth a couple times.

There was an audible click.

"Do you have a hidden safe, Ru?"

She nodded, and pulled open the door, "Aha! Made it myself! Clockwork is hard, but so much fun. All the little gears. I get to work with the smallest hammers!"

Ruel pulled out the smallest of her small red stones. It looked almost like a ruby, but the red colour inside flickered from a sort of internal light. Magical energy, right on the cusp of detonating.

She relocked the safe and stepped over, eyeing off the miner carefully. Giving a little growl as she opened her hands to show him the cradled stone that was so precious to her.

He looked in surprise at it, "Wow. You cut that, yourself? It's... Shiny."

"Don't patronise." She snapped her hands closed, glaring at him. "I know. I'm just a stupid girl who likes shiny things and you're bored. Whatever!"

Jessop stared in shock as Ruel stormed back over to her safe, and carefully put away her stone, before locking it again. Then she stomped back over to the bed, and dove under the blankets, curling up and biting one as she tried not to scream at herself in frustration.

She was trying to cheer him up! Not make him feel like she was kicking him out.

"Well, you've distracted me enough times. I was going to tell you something about the Milky Cove." Jessop smelled like he resented her, but was trying to see past it. "I actually thought you might have heard, because I asked for Cohen's help, getting a missive to the palace."

Ruel popper her head out of the blankets, tail frozen in place. "Really? What about?"

"I found the entrance to the Milky Cove. Beneath Dreichard's Mine." Jessop stated, "And asked the palace to help fund an expedition."

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

---

"For her memory. For the king." The salamander crouched beside the enormous pile of sticks, logs, and even torn apart furniture. The pyre had been assembled and expanded by the entire city.

Glass bottles of milk ringed the edges. Small wooden toys, and scraps of clothing also lay there. Memories from the nekos who knew that their safety, their continued ability to breathe, had been entirely because of one soul.

Blue flames lazily tongued and flickered out from Erientyara's mouth, as she lit the sacrifice aflame. A pointless candle to cry and stare into, when there was nothing of her love that remained.

Then she took a step backwards, standing tall. She took a deep breath, before snapping her wings out and bellowing out a roar of pain into the skies. It boiled up and out of her, shaking the ground in nothing but endless pain.

She heard the exotics in the square panicking, taking off in fear, before they managed to get ahold of their frantic emotions. Before they staggered back. A few of them attempting to mimic her, join with her in the pain and loss.

Timid and shaking caterwauls rising up.

A solid hand landed on her shoulder, and the bunny wavered back and forth for a moment. Avician let out a belch that stank of alcohol, and then the bunneko opened her mouth and let rip with a horrifying sound that staggered Erientyara.

She turned and stared at the woman in terror as she let out a shrieking screaming that was practically deafening, and absolutely did something to the salamander's bowels.

The dragon stared at the screaming woman, and was not convinced that they weren't dying.

Avician's mouth snapped shut, as quickly as it had opened. She turned her head to Erientyara, revealing that both her eyes were bloodshot from tears. Also making the dragon note that the woman was dressed in nothing but her underthings.

She'd discarded all of her armour, her sword and dagger. Even thrown aside the necklace that she had once worn.

Avician had removed everything with a single sign of her goddess.

"I've had two drinks." The bunneko announced to Erientyara, glaring at her painfully. "I thought... Alcohol was supposed to dull the pain. There's certainly a buzz in my head, but it isn't whispering anything sweet. Bubbles is gone, and dead, and... And you're the only one who could put me down. End my pain. I won't go by my own hand, but battle is another matter."

The salamander grimaced, "I... Am not going to help you kill yourself."

"Why not? Not like I'm worth a shit. No god, no queen. Never a lover, always the fighter." The bunneko said bitterly, "Give me one last fight. The only fight, I have ever fought, just for myself. Give me a glorious death."

"Gods above, you are drunk, aren't you?" The dragon said with pain, noticing that the two of them were still standing at the centre of attention. Bubbles would not have been forgiving, if she were still here, and Erientyara did not get Avician home safely.

She did the only thing she could think of, and embraced the bunneko in a fierce hug, to pin their arms to their sides, and then shot off into the sky.

Her plans instantly changed from two things.

For one, the palace was apparently on fire. She'd missed that chaos, in her focused grief. She didn't want to know what was happening, she only wished she had a god she was willing to pray to, that it might turn out better in the morning.

For another - Avician did not accept the situation.

Halfway into the sky, the dragon suddenly found herself spinning head over tail, as the bunneko's feet slammed down into her stomach and bounced the woman out and into freefall.

Grunting through gritted teeth at the kick, she tried and failed to spread her wings. Unable to tell sky from ground as she spun. Not that she really feared hitting the ground, that'd just rattle her teeth. Painful, but bearable.

The stubborn bitch, on the other hand, would probably turn into a crumpled reject on a slaughterhouse floor.

Bubbles would have never forgiven her, if she allowed that to happen.

"Fuck." She cursed, and turned to the only trick she could think of. It was a thing of flight, but it was one that she hated because she threw up afterwards, every single time. She rolled her shoulders, guiding with her tail, and turned the fall into a spiral.

The dragon instantly shot forward towards the ground, before whipping her wings out and practically coming to a standstill. She hissed black smoke in pain as she nearly tore the tendons, but managed to reach out a claw and snag the falling bunny by the ankle.

Avician chattered her teeth angrily, as Erientyara barely managed to avoid crashing into the street, dragging them both back upwards into the sky. The paladin kicked at her wrist, bruising it, the muscles and maybe even cracking the fucking bone.

The salamander gave another twist, spinning the both of them before dropping solidly onto two feet. As they touched down, Avician landed a punch into her lower gut, "I didn't want to be -!"

That was as far as she could scream, before Erientyara's vomit sprayed through her teeth and all over the bunneko's face. One ear flopped from the weight of the phlegm and general grossness, and the woman clamped both hands to her nose, looking at her in bewilderment.

The salamander slid down to her knees, and vomited onto the ground. She coughed weakly, "Just... Because... I was born to fly... Doesn't mean... Flying is easy."

"Ewwww." Avician moaned weakly.

Erientyara nodded tiredly, "I am inclined to agree... There's a bath house near here, I think. If we beg, they may open it for us."

"I regret dumping my armour. Both for recognition, and uh... Protection." Avician stated unsteadily, "Did you know... Your vomit burns?"

"Melts stone." Erientyara shrugged and staggered upright, "I am... Somewhat surprised your fur isn't smoking."

The bunneko dragged a sleeve over her ears, still with one hand clamped tightly over her nose. "Been burnt too often, for that. My fur ain't exactly silky."

---

"I'm surprised that you're not in Fanhalla. Don't you have someone to punish for killing your tool?" The golden-tailed woman walked in, bold as brass. Always acting like she owned the place, even when it had been some time since she was even welcome.

The neko glared over at her, "What is she talking about, this time?"

"Bubbles. She was ridiculously cute..." The kitsune yawned and stretched, before shedding her dress. Stepping out of it lightly, and revealing that she hadn't been bothered to wear anything else, along with it.

She tsk'd in annoyance, "Did you come, just to annoy her? To get her back, for winning our last little game?"

"Meirakeillian? I still consider that one my win. Everything is my win, sooner or later." Her orange eyes blazed to gold, "Mostly, I was interested in you. As usual. But the dead cat provides an excellent excuse to fool around with you. Get a hatefuck, if you aren't willing to admit you still like me."

The neko's mouth quirked into a smile, "Oh? Is my little queen dead, is she?"

The other woman hesitated for a moment, before sitting across her lap. Placing her naked arms around her neck, and lightly kissing her cheek. "Now, then. I suppose I'm wrong, from that response. What have you done, Luna? The others won't be happy if you've broken the rules. They barely tolerate it, when I do. Or have you forgotten what they did to my Eratigan?"

"Bubbles is Bubbles. She did it, all on her own, without a scrap of divine intervention." The silver-haired neko snickered, before lightly holding the other god's waist. "Comparing her to Eratigan, isn't badly thought out. Eratigan didn't know she dead. Bubbles? She the unluckiest neko that ever did live. Want something to go to chaos? Put Luna's favourite, nearby. Hasn't the Golden Kitsune been tempted?"

The woman kissed her cheek and purred, "Mmm. Many times. I did have this one idea... But you gave her a fucking paladin to protect her from me, you bitch."

"She did." Luna giggled, grinning at her ex-lover, "Bubbles is fine. Well, not fine. But living. She will still be the Luna's entertainment, when the war annoys her. Sorry. No sentimental grieving fuck for the fox bitch."

The kitsune screwed up her nose, "Then... How is your catgirl beyond my senses? Can't smell her, anywhere. Nowhere."

"Somewhere. Just not a mortal somewhere." Luna's eyes sparkled, as she enjoyed being the one with the knowledge. She did plan to tell her ex. Watching that meltdown would be fun. However, there was no reason not to drag it out, and get even more fun, that way.

The Kitsune let out a low warning growl, "I broke the Gateway. Or Toofy did. Precisely because I didn't like the division of worlds. There shouldn't be a place mortals can go, that is neither our divine realms, nor the mortal worlds."