Quoted By:
The uninitiated and the outsider would not recognize your next action as anything more than a simple chop of the hand, the sort of movement that a wise woman might make to help a child banish an evil spirit.
From your perspective, and those who were sensitive to the flow of magic through the divine fluids, chopping your hand like a knife between Astra and Romulus is the final step of a complex process that a lesser sorceress would have needed an hour of chanting and balancing the flow of magic to accomplish. Messily woven through the primal fluid of orgone their bond may have been, its extraction from their souls without causing harm is still a delicate task. This is not simply expelling an effect without care for that which was expelled, but unraveling conjoined threads without harming the fiber as a whole.
A task you accomplish as easily as you breath. As complex as it might be, you are still who you are, a woman hand crafted by one of the greatest sorcerers of the age to be the perfect heir. Balancing the flows of the divine fluids is a simple task, and then...
"All done," you tell them, and both sigh in relief. "Now go get yourselves some sleep... and nothing else."
Both of them make a face that the implication.
[My Lady, I am sure Miss Astra is an elven beauty, but...]
"Yeah, Rommy's a magnificent wolf and all, but that's a little..."
You give them both a satisfied smile. "I'm glad we're all on the same page."
Though as sit down to meditate, your eye twitches involuntarily when your expanded senses pick up Astra saying something that one of your more prejudiced cousins would describe as <span class="mu-i">distinctly elven in its thottery</span>, "Though if I was in heat... a dick's a dick."
===
Morning comes with the cycle of the mushrooms on the ceiling, as their flower-like caps open into a "bloom" that fills the cavern with a blue-gold light that is surprising close to the color and intensity of the sun. You've awoken just as the petals begin to open, the deep reddish purple giving way to false daylight. Before you, the lake spreads out through the cavern, glittering with the same striking mineral-blue color of glacier melt that fills the lakes of your family's retreat in the mountains north of Rosebridge.
It's a lovely and nostalgic sight, but you do not allow it to lower your guard.
After all, there are no chefs here to make your breakfast, nor maids to chastise you for being underdressed. You'll have to do that first bit yourself, and if anyone tries the second bit you don't need to playact chastened and force yourself into an itchy woolen shift. You'll just punch them hard enough to send them flying across the lake.
<span class="mu-s">Where do you decide to go fishing?</span>
>From the shore of the lake.
>Wade out to waist height and try catching things with your hands.
>Swim into the depths and see if there's anything big enough to punch that's also tasty-looking.
>Wade into the knee-deep stream that runs into the lake and try your luck in the rapids.
