>>5844267“Ezreal,” she spoke softly but firmly, with JUST a hint of her adoptive mother’s condescension, “there is NEVER a sure thing when you’re doing what we’re doing… But it’s like you sad. I don’t want to leave this world only to be trapped in… In ME. In this… This prison I was born into.”
She quivered slightly, and you squeezed her hand back, even as a part of you still felt deeply uncomfortable with her own self-loathing and revulsion for a body which, frankly, you had grown intimately fond of in spite of its flaws… or maybe even in part BECAUSE of them, because of the mystery which her anatomy represented, the puzzle to be solved. You had a penchant for mysterious and enigmatic creatures, for secret knowledge. What was Izirina Henzler, but such intellectual desires made physical, made carnal? Esoteric secrets you could hold, and kiss, and make love to…
(Not that you’d ever say that! Frankly, it was a little uncomfortable to think about.)
“Alright,” you replied. “But, uh… Is it okay if I invite someone else?”
Izirina’s eyebrows raised, and you flushed. You felt faintly embarrassed, as if you’d proposed an intrusion into your intimacy, but you pressed on, explaining your intentions. Whether because of love and trust, or her own curiosity, Izirina accepted readily enoguh.
Costella was more hesitant to participate in the ritual than was Izirina. Perhaps that made sense: your last effort to help her had made her a freakish thing, almost wholly covered in rough and armour-like green scales, nose receded and mouth distended into a lizardlike countenance, hair all but gone. Her body had grown lengthier, taller, but her legs and arms had subtly deformed, and her feminine curvature—MAMAMLIAN female curvature—had reded as her musculoskeletal anatomy shifted towards the nigh-crocodilian. She, who had been in the bloom of young adulthood and arguably most beautiful of the infected volunteers, and who had certainly been most vain and most hesitant, had received surely the worst result.
“She’s… Fascinating,” Izirina breathed, as the crocodile-skin end woman shrunk away from her.
You frowned at your lover, who at least had the good sense and self-awareness to look a little embarrassed, and to look away from this pox-victim who had become akin to a Mirror Maze distortion of her own condition.
