Without an aggressive standing army, Seyruun had turned watching out into a community responsibility. All across Seyruun were balconies and verandas for looking out over the mountains, valleys, and forests. There was no shortage of places Zelgadis could have gone to check for any sign of Lina and Gourry, but he didn't need to. He went to meet them as soon as he heard the order to lock down the pantries.
"Don't you dare touch me, pal!" came a high-pitched squawk that echoed down the halls. "I'm here because Amelia asked, and I'm with royalty!"
Royalty?! Zelgadis raced to the stairs where amidst the crowds he could clearly pick out Lina, Gourry, and Pokota cornered by a cordon of guards. Never mind. "It's all right, they're distinguished guests," he told the doubtful guards as he signaled their dismissal. "I'll take it from here."
He looked at Lina and Gourry, exhausted and unkempt and streaked with dirt. From his place atop Gourry's head Pokota was covered in lint and stray hair. "You couldn't have cut it much closer. The coronation's tomorrow," he said, in case the three of them hadn't noticed the frantic hustle and bustle in every direction and the multiple banners advertising the coronation tomorrow.
"You're criticizing me?!" Lina snapped. "Don't give me that crap! You have no idea how far and how fast we flew to get here on time!"
"Did you find the lost princess? Is she here?"
"She's-it's not-whatever!" She threw up both arms in a gesture of surrender that filled Zelgadis with dread: the only situation worse than a long-lost princess whose unexpected presence could throw all Seyruun into upheaval was a situation that Lina felt helpless to contain. If Lina felt something was more than she could manage, the people who did have to manage it were, in the technical terminology employed by strategists, boned.
"What about you?" Gourry asked. "What happened to Filia and Sylphiel?"
"They're not here." Filia had departed for home as soon as they reached Seyruun, bemoaning her damaged hat, and, well, getting left behind was what Sylphiel did best. Zelgadis refocused his attention on Pokota. "Why did you come?"
"Because it's a big moment for Amelia and I want to be here for her," Pokota said, with such ease that Zelgadis longed to drop-kick him into a chandelier. "Where is she?"
"Busy with princess things. I haven't spoken to her in two days, and probably won't until after all the celebrations are over. There's an entire day of festivities planned following the coronation."
There was a theatrical gasp improbably pointed in their direction. The royal seneschal came rushing towards them, arms outstretched. He was a striking middle-aged man with the most colorful wardrobe in Seyruun and notoriously immaculate turbans. "There was, you mean! Or have you found it?!"
"Found what?"
"Oh...you haven't, then," he said, crestfallen. He balled his hands into fists. "Sir Greywords, I have the most horrible news! The script is missing!"
Zelgadis turned to Lina, who shook her head; even at her height, some gags were beneath her. He turned back to the seneschal. "What script?"
"The script for the festivities!" he wailed, dabbing at his keen green eyes. "We had it all planned out, but there was some kind of monster in the office and all the writers left! Now we've got the dancing bears trying to share space with the fireworks vendors, the caterers don't have their contracts, and we lost the prepared remarks. It's a disaster!"
"We don't have time for some random escapade..." Zelgadis started, then trailed off. Monster attacks in the palace weren't something he could ignore. It would also keep two of the most powerful sorcerers he knew occupied amidst an extremely important event they might otherwise set on fire. And it would be a shame if the celebrations were ruined after a whole month of mourning.
Plus, fireworks...
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at his friends, who had brightened up at the mention of caterers. Pokota pounded a little fist into Gourry's head and chanted. "Es-ca-pade! Es-ca-pade!"
"...fine."
"What in the world is that?!" Amelia asked nervously. She stood in front of Marjan and Maris in the airy tailor's studio, wearing only a linen shift that brushed at her knees. Dozens of elaborate layered gowns stood waiting on dress forms like a standing army. Amelia, no stranger to the intricacies of royal style, was worried about something much stranger and more daunting.
Marjan held up a garment in her wrinkled hands. It was shaped similar to a boned corset, but stopped just beneath the bust, with two wide molded cups and long shoulder straps. "This is a very special model of short stays made just for you, Princess, to reinforce that which…" She yanked Amelia's arms up and slid the stays over them. "...cannot be constrained by a mere corset."
"What, I have to wear this and a corset too?!" Amelia gasped as the underwire boning dug into her breastbone. "But…"
"We are not risking another equinox ceremony mishap," Marjan said, as crisp as the metal ruler she used to swat across disobedient little palms, and Amelia blushed. The royal tailor had only narrowly escaped banishment after that incident. On the other hand, the visiting students from the royal academies had never been more engaged. "Heavens. You could fit a full formal place setting on either end," she said, examining Amelia from the back with a critical sniff. "There's no doubting you're your mother's daughter."
Maris lifted Amelia's breasts to the edge of the stays as one might tidy pillows. Everything about a princess, including her body, was in the public domain. "Speaking of place settings, did you hear they shut down the kitchens? They wouldn't even let me take an apple for lunch!"
They shut the kitchens? Those few words filled Amelia with more sunshine and soaring hope than could fit in her constrained chest. Lina-san had come through to deliver the perfect last-minute happy ending Amelia had always believed in. "The kitchens?!" she exclaimed. "I've got to go-"
She leapt forward to rush away, but Marjan yanked on the ribbons of her stays, and she dropped to the floor.
"You aren't going anywhere, Your Highness," Marjan said. "Your country needs you. Specifically," and she pointed towards the un-armed formalwear forces, "your country needs you in one of these."
The busy administrative office was littered in hundreds of parchments. There had been dozens of writers hard at work, the seneschal explained, but they'd collectively decided they weren't being paid enough to handle monster attacks on top of sprint periods, and so they had fled. The room smelled of ammonia and crushed ambition.
With no telltale mist or other trace of monsters, Zelgadis and the others settled into the office's immense throne-like chairs to begin sorting. None of them knew anything about hosting a royal celebration, but lack of knowledge had never stopped them before. They were already in agreement on the need for confetti, parades, and lots of fried food on sticks. The biggest point of contention was where to begin. Seyruun's many talented scribes had explored many directions, like bandit chases (worked better on the page anyway) and introducing mysterious beautiful women (done before, with mixed results). The phrase Rezo returns appeared in a worrying amount of drafts, all of which they hurriedly crumpled and threw aside.
"Here's one about releasing a bunch of birds. What about that?" Gourry proposed. "Isn't that a big thing here?"
As soon as Zelgadis considered it he wished he'd thought of it first. Pigeons and doves were used in many royal ceremonies in Seyruun, and they did always seem to be soaring meaningfully over the palace. "Maybe. Birds symbolize change, movement, growth..."
Lina leaned all the way back in her chair so that she could pluck pages off the floor with minimal effort. She gnawed at an apple with one hand and shuffled through scripts with the other. "Oooh, look at you and all your fancy symbolism, Director Man," she mocked, but it was good-natured mockery in the way only Lina could manage. "Don't forget we're staging a party, not a classic tragedy."
"I am not a director," Zelgadis said, although the idea of people listening to him for once had its charms. "Let's go with the birds. One of the other knights helps run the aviary, so I can handle that."
"I still don't get how you're a knight," complained Pokota, sprawled belly down on Lina's head with his long ears draped over either side of her face. "Aren't you, like, a felon? We saw your ugly mug on old wanted posters on the way here."
"He's totally a felon," Lina said, as though Zelgadis wasn't in the room. It was hard to know which was worse: Lina and Pokota locked in history's pettiest squabble, or Lina and Pokota getting along. "Sure, I get the bad rap, but people are mad at me in general. They're mad at Zel specifically."
Zelgadis grumbled something about how at least he wasn't viewed as a threat to world peace, chiefly to hide his discomfort with a valid point. The difference between their crimes was more a matter of philosophy than degree, and it was sheer fortune that he had ended up a trusted knight while she was still sometimes on the run. It wasn't fair, but neither was life.
"Phil needs people he can trust, and there aren't a lot of those in Seyruun," he said, hoping to sound ambivalent. "And the experience with assassins is a plus."
Lina lifted up Pokota's ear to whisper in it. "He's just a sucker for strong paternal figures."
"Shocker," Pokota muttered.
Zelgadis kicked a leg of her chair so that both Lina and Pokota fell with a heartwarming whump. He couldn't believe he had ever been so starved for affection as to find her attractive. A part of him that he was too annoyed to consider appreciated the journey all the same.
Caution is the mother of security, the saying went in Seyruun; with less than a full day before the coronation, caution might have been the mother of the new king, what with how proudly everyone spoke of the palace's extensive defenses. This talk continued even after word got out about the kitchen lockdown, which in turn escalated into more lockdowns and deployments while Seyruun's bravest went to confront an undisclosed threat that Amelia had been counting on.
Amelia was confined to a small section of the east wing including her own quarters and, lamentably, the dress studio. With her movements restricted both by palace orders and dresses that made it difficult to breathe, much less walk, Amelia could only wait for the thrilling news of her sister's arrival.
Minutes passed in insufferable slowness that became crawling, tortured hours with still no report, and Amelia wondered if Lina had run into trouble as she so often did. She reminded herself to keep believing and focus on the excitement that awaited. Maybe Gracia would arrive in a dress that complemented one of the dozens Amelia was trying.
By noon her optimism was beginning to waver, in part because none of the dresses had fit at all. The designs tried to either minimize or accentuate Amelia's more generously feminine traits, to disastrous results. Marjan was on the verge of a conniption, calling down damnation with curses at least two generations removed from contemporary vernacular. The old woman was so angry she'd even allowed for a break, giving Amelia time to see if any news had reached the isolated east wing.
News might not have reached them, but something had. The grand halls swarmed with security officials in urgent conversations that stopped as soon as they caught sight of Amelia. The sentries posted outside Amelia's suite refused to make eye contact, instead turning away with guilty looks.
When she went inside her gaze zeroed in on a dark red splotch on the carpet. Blood-?!
"Guards?" she called uneasily, then knelt down to examine the stain. No, not blood, something thinner and acidic. Nearby the top cover on her bed had been pulled over a shattered wine glass. Amelia took in the stain, the shards, the open window with its fluttering curtains, and she understood.
She spotted a used napkin on her dresser and was there in an instant to read over the slapdash scrawl:
You'll be great!
- G
Amelia stared. When staring gave her no respite, she willed the letters to be anything besides what she read. She willed the note undone, the moment undone, the day undone; she pinched her arms in hopes that she would wake up. The world around her collapsed inward like burning parchment. She had been holding her breath, but now it seemed she didn't need to breathe at all. Her chest tightened.
The sun shone with the promise of a glorious new era for Seyruun. Amelia sank to her knees and sobbed.
There was no such heartbreak or high drama in the acres of lush landscaped gardens outside the palace, where the celebrations were coming together on an invigorating late summer afternoon. Once the party's substitute architects had sketched out the celebrations, all that was left to do was organize the vendors accordingly.
Zelgadis assigned himself to the opening ceremony, which included a six-part trumpet fanfare and a spectacular release of birds. The birds posed more of a problem than he'd expected, since there was a lot of complicated interpretations about what birds signified depending on whether they flew towards Seyruun or away from it. Annoyed, he ordered birds released at six different locations throughout the city to improve their odds with heavenly favors. Once he'd had all he could take about the nuances of augury, Zelgadis went to check on the others.
Towards the garden entrance, behemoth dancing bears and beefy men in loincloths stood on either side of a gate. The latter were trembling, their impossibly defined chest muscles rippling with terror. Pokota sat in a wagon beside the boxers, massaging his tiny temples with his ear-hands. "Ugh, why do I have to deal with the boxers and the bears?" he whined.
"Because they were your idea," Zelgadis pointed out.
Pokota glossed past this. "Anyway, I have six of Seyruun's champion boxers and six dancing bears, and they have to get to their parade site over there," he said, gesturing to a grassy hill closer to the central city. "I've got this wagon, but it can only carry two of them at a time."
"So?"
"So?!" Pokota cried. "Don't you get it?! These bears have spent all their lives restraining their true nature. If I leave a bear and boxer alone together, or more bears than boxers on either side, the bears are gonna eat them!"
"What makes you say that?"
"Because I started with seven of Seyruun's champion boxers."
Well, that part was a problem for the real magicians in the legal bureau. "You're an engineering genius," Zelgadis said, recalling every time Pokota had called him things like 'barium breath' and 'a pet rock with depression'. He had no sympathy to spare. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."
"Hey! I'm an engineering genius who still hasn't had lunch!"
Lunch waited on Lina, who bossed around the white-aproned caterers. For once her focus wasn't solely on eating. After six helpings of steak and potatoes, which she'd coincidentally forgotten to share with her friends, she had taken to spirited critique.
"How much cinsault is in this plonk?!" she hollered, shaking a bottle over her head at a terrified group of cooks and vintners. "And you're serving this with steak? What are we, starving farmers? You're telling me Phil doesn't have access to some good merlot?!"
She carried on with such ferocity that Zelgadis thought better of interrupting. For some reason the sight stuck with him and he resolved to ask Gourry about it.
Gourry was helping a luckier group of strongmen assemble boulder-herding contraptions. He'd suggested a ceremonial boulder rolling to honor Phil's fame in Rolly Polly Village, another unexpectedly excellent idea Zelgadis wished he'd had. When he reached an appropriate stopping point he gladly took a break, walking with Zelgadis towards the edge of the gardens.
"Lina was really going on about the right type of wine and food," Zelgadis began. "I guess I never thought she had…" The word taste came to mind, but he decided against it. "...an interest. I thought she just ate and drank."
"Oh, yeah. I think it's a Zephilian thing. She once didn't talk to me for two hours because I ate chocolate cake with chenin blanc."
Zelgadis would have been content to end the conversation there, but he considered the vast galaxies of things he didn't know about the people around him, least of all the man with whom he'd shared rooms for years. Was it too late to learn more now?
Zelgadis glanced over at Gourry and noted his confident, sturdy features, so handsome and harmless. Surely he was a safe subject for low-stakes social experiments.
"Do you, uh, like wine?" Zelgadis tried feebly, and wanted to die.
"Sure."
Now what? Flirting had to be easier than this. "What kind...of wine?"
"Eh, I'm not picky. But I like yellow."
"Yellow," Zelgadis repeated, beginning to think this line of inquiry might not be as fruitful as he'd hoped.
"Yeah, yellow." Gourry folded his arms behind his head. "A few years ago Lina and I got stuck at this little inn in Gyria during a blizzard and the innkeeper made us the best poulet au vin jaune I've ever had. You can't make good poulet au vin jaune without some good vin jaune, you know?"
Zelgadis had to run these words over in sequence several times before he grasped them, and when he did, he was so dumbfounded that he couldn't think of a response. He was saved from bewildered silence by a small company of soldiers racing by.
"Pick up the pace, men!" the soldiers' captain ordered, hoisting a magic staff overhead. "We've got a situation on our hands and the family needs us!"
Zelgadis and Gourry exchanged looks, and without another word they took off towards the palace. Manly wine and women wisdom would have to wait.
Hours and countless gowns later, they were no closer to an ensemble that met the chief maidservant's exacting standards for feminine decency. Amelia had tried to feign some kind of interest, but stopped when she discovered it didn't matter. The dresses kept coming and the corsets kept pinching above her suffocating short stays.
"Absolutely unacceptable!" Marjan said, thumping her cane for emphasis. Scandalized outrage drove her raspy old voice up a full octave. "You go out there looking like that and you'll be eaten up by every scoundrel in sight! I'm going to restore some modesty to this family if it's the last thing I do. Come along, Maris. You'll need to carry the dresses they no doubt meant to send instead."
The maids departed to inspire a new fear unto everyone that wielded a sewing needle, and Amelia shut the door behind them. It didn't matter that they hadn't bothered to help her out of the last outfit, the tightest one of all. It didn't matter.
I have to do this, she thought. Seyruun needs me. It felt like defeat.
And then, another thought: feed me.
"What…?" Amelia looked down at the ground, where one of the astral worm-beasts rolled almost playfully underfoot. Go ahead and cry, it seemed to say. You have so much to cry about...
The opportunity to feel anything other than tense misery was too tempting, and Amelia embraced battle adrenaline. "Graceful Princess Waltz Step!" She smashed it under her heel. It disappeared in a puff of mist, but more milky white vapor spilled out from the hem of her dress. Amelia was too startled and disgusted to scream. She smashed her skirt into the wall, breaking the farthingale that held it upright. More worms tumbled down her dress. Although she could not feel them as objects, she felt their spirits, and it made her skin crawl just the same.
Poor lonely princess, they said, whispering directly into her, casting blinding bright lights that tore into her tender heart. The monster was inside her, a hateful parasite that had taken root in her suffering and was now ready to consume its host.
You're all alone...all alone...so feed us!
She tried to pull the layers of skirts off, but they were fastened with dozens of interlocking pins. All she managed to do was dislodge her stockings and garters so that itchy crinoline rubbed against her bare skin.
"Get out! Get out! Get off of me!" Amelia shrieked, both to the long worms and the terrors they spoke into being. She alternated between attacking and defending, running and stomping on her painful heels.
The creatures weaved around the dress forms faster than she could hit. In desperation she tried a Bomb Rod, which ignited the gown so fast that by the time she drenched herself with Aqua Create it had burned to a husk.
"Amelia!" came a voice from outside. It was Zelgadis, calling for her.
He's here! Hearing him kindled something in her, powerful enough that she felt the need to put him off rather than give in. She wasn't ready for him to see her in tears, her skirts destroyed and garters down. "Zelgadis-san, please get Lina-san!"
"What?!"
"Please trust me! Get Lina-san!"
She could sense his internal debate and thought he might ignore her, but then she heard him take off. Her chest ached with regret.
...or is it? Amelia recalled the first knight she'd seen, the supposed heart attacks, her own tight and painful chest. What if the monsters weren't in her heart after all? What if it was somewhere much more obvious?
Amelia tore at the pins around her triangle-shaped stomacher until it came loose and flung it across the room, then yanked at the corset. It throbbed under her touch.
Why send for her? said the monsters, louder than ever. Lina lied to you. Gracia left you and your father didn't care if she never came back.
No one can save you from what's about to happen...
A bone-chilling gust blew straight at Amelia, and tears streamed unbidden down her cheeks. "N-no," she stammered. "No!"
The corset was fastened so tightly Amelia had to enchant her fists to pull it apart. Beneath the corset were hundreds of glowing astral worms crawling in and out of the short stays against her skin. One struck directly at her breast. It pierced her skin, or her soul, or both; the fear was so all-encompassing she couldn't tell where it began or ended, the exact shellshocked helplessness when she'd turned to see Gaav behind her with his long blade.
Can I fight? Should I fight?
Of course I should, thought the same Amelia that had once tried to punch a rampaging Zanaffar. "Bram Fang!" she cried, with sufficient force to slice through the stays and down into layers of crinoline and linen petticoats. "Ouch!" She ran backwards, but the short stays hovered in midair, held aloft by the monsters swarming inside it. Amelia realized the worms formed one larger mazoku, a hivemind of despair that oozed mist from each of its tiny hissing pieces.
Free at last of her gown, Amelia could fight properly. "Elmekia Flame!"
Her attack just singed the parasite, which along with the short stays glided out of the way and levitated until it rose far above her head. She tried to spear it with an Elmekia Lance, but it sailed straight through the shoulder straps.
Your father couldn't save your family and neither can you, said the hive. No one can save you. Someday you'll be betrayed and alone like him.
Like my father? She thought of her father, there for her every moment of her life until he'd trusted her to seek her own fortune, who had made her just and brave and strong; Gourry-san and Pokota-san rescuing her from Gduza; Lina-san who had saved her so many times, Lina-san who had hunted down her father's would-be assassins, Lina-san who had crossed the continent to bring her sister home; the scream she could never forget as they barreled into the cliffs, the look on his face when he'd taken her bracelet; you should tell someone…
"You are wrong," Amelia declared with a defiant, dramatic point of her finger. "I don't care that they're not perfect! My friends will never let me be alone! My daddy is the best person in the whole world! And I can save myself!"
Amelia started to chant under her breath. The hive spewed a rapid-fire barrage of light beams that she couldn't parry, and didn't try. She let herself feel the full force of each attack. It's okay, she reminded herself, even as her spirit weakened. I can feel it, it's only a moment, it doesn't last. The sharp stabs of agony were real in a sense, but not true. The truth was a shared bowl of hot pot or napping in the back of a cart while Gourry sang a traveling song.
She pulled the mist into the burgeoning magic winds that grew stronger as she chanted, enveloping the seed of a brilliant blue flame. Its light outshone the monsters' infernal glow.
The worms swelled around the deep cups and straps of the short stays. Accept your destiny, it demanded, but with less control than before. It's too late for you now!
Amelia slammed her hands together and thrust them outwards.
"Bra Tilt!"
Sometimes Zelgadis didn't mind being a chimera. Sometimes he was grateful for it. His unnatural body and its abilities paid off now as he kept up a sprint far beyond a normal man's. The soldiers posted around the palace could recognize the spiky blue-beige blur at a distance and made no effort to stop him.
Where is she? He tried to feel for her astral presence and couldn't pick it out amidst so many anxious souls. Even as one-third brau demon, he was still less sensitive than a shrine maiden. His astral senses were darker, more base: impulses to attack, eat, kill. But he could smell Amelia, smell where she'd been, and followed all the way to the upper east wing.
All of the guards and soldiers were clustered around Amelia's quarters, yet his ears picked up muffled thumps from further away. Down several more halls and around a corner he spotted a door seeping with mist.
"Get out! Get out! Get off of me!"
The door was locked. He was ready to take it down with a Flare Arrow but had to shout "Amelia!" first, so that she knew he was there, that he had come for her.
"Zelgadis-san!" she answered, more frustrated than frightened, and his heart rate decreased from "summer downpour on a snare drum" to "woodpecker after coffee". He knew how she sounded when she was genuinely in peril and this was not it. "Please get Lina-san!"
"What?!" The Flare Arrow dissipated in his hand.
"Please trust me!" she pleaded. "Get Lina-san!"
Zelgadis fought the urge to break down the door anyway, but that monumentally unfair move of please trust me might as well have been one of Rezo's commands. You idiot, he thought, and went in search of Lina. Fortunately she wasn't too hard to find, as she'd been detained by guards whose reaction to "you can't stop me, I'm Lina Inverse" had been an admirable display of professional dedication.
"Lina!" For the second time that day he had to convince authorities that his friends meant no harm. "Lina! Amelia asked for you!"
"Wow," Lina said, forgetting about the pikes pointed in her face. "She asked for me and not you?" Zelgadis wanted to stage-direct her off a ledge.
They took off for the apartments, where loud thumps at least gave him hope that she was still fighting. As they approached there was a shout he was certain he misheard and from under the door he saw an unmistakable blue light. Lina blew open the door with a Fireball, leaving Zelgadis to wait alone outside and tend to his rejection. There was nothing to stop him from overhearing the conversation just steps away. This time he wasn't bothered.
"A-Amelia!" Lina gasped. "Would you put those things away?! Geez, I can't believe it took me so long to see the resemblance! Look, let's uh...um..." Something rustled. "How about that? It'll do for now."
"Lina-san! Oh, Lina-san, I'm so sorry! I'm sorry I thought that you didn't..."
"You'd better be!" Lina shot back, then her tone took on an uncharacteristic delicacy. "I mean...hey, Amelia, it's fine...sisters, am I right?"
Zelgadis hoped she'd elaborate but could tell it wasn't for him to know. He was ashamed of himself for feeling jilted.
There was a strangled sob and, after counting to some number he couldn't hear over the blood rushing in his ears, Zelgadis stepped in. He paid no attention to the dress forms toppled in haphazard piles or the sooty, smoldering clothes. There was just Lina, who held Amelia with a gentle fondness he didn't know she could possess; and Amelia, wearing Lina's cape like a barber's drape around her neck. Charred fragments of petticoats stuck out from under the cape.
"O-oh, Zelgadis-san," Amelia said, facing him with a wide smile meant to distract from her damp, swollen eyes. "I think the monsters are gone. They weren't hiding in people's hearts, just the clothes people wear over them. But don't worry, true love triumphed in the end! No matter how far you plunge into the darkness, you can always push up with the support of your friends!"
In that ridiculous moment Zelgadis was awestruck by the limitations of knowledge. The unquestionable uselessness of his emotions, knowing they were useless, did absolutely nothing to temper them. She was the most absurd person on the planet and he would die for her. The Thing inside him roared so loudly he thought he would go mad.
Zelgadis was silent for a long time. Because there was no way he could say anything to Amelia he spoke to Lina instead.
"What?"
"I wasn't gonna ask," Lina grinned, then realized she still had an arm on Amelia's waist. "I, uh-c'mon, Zel! Hey, Gourry!" she called into the air as if summoning him. Sure enough, Zelgadis could hear Gourry's armor clank as the swordsman jogged to join them. "It's not me...Amelia needs us."
Zelgadis knew Lina's preferred way to cope with embarrassment was making them all share in it. He let himself be dragged between Lina's shoulder pauldrons and Gourry's breastplate. His left arm hovered for a bit, then rested gingerly over Amelia's shoulders as he gave Lina a soft pat with his right. Amelia shifted to lean against him and he held her closer. The four of them had shared a few of these hugs before, but this one felt different for reasons he couldn't quite get his hands around.
Not that he was great with feeling in general. His skin, tougher than corundum, deflected bullets that he barely felt, while the irregular sharp rocks that jutted out from his bones had no nerve endings at all. Friendly touching only reminded him what he was missing. But somewhere down the line he'd begun to welcome someone's affectionate pokes and pets, and that had opened up whole new avenues of sensation. Imagination, context, meaning: he'd rediscovered the best parts of touching happened in the brain.
"Thank you for being here…"
"Aw, c'mon. We all know that relatives can be trash, right?"
"Hey, Lina."
"It's okay, Gourry-san. She's right." Amelia dropped her voice until it was barely above a breath, too soft for humans to hear even when they were all so close. "But I don't know if I can keep believing..."
Keep believing what? Zelgadis wondered. He imagined how a real man might murmur something soothing, or mouth a kiss on the top of her head. But he wasn't a man, not enough, not with a chin covered in rocks so sharp they could open tin cans (a method Lina sometimes used when fixing beans, preceded by a "heads up!" and a speedy overhand toss) and razor-sharp hair. Hugs were only possible if everyone kept far away from his face.
The way Amelia moved made him think she still had tears left to cry, and she buried her face in his chest; it must have hurt, Zelgadis thought, and he hoped his clothes were thick enough to cushion her cheek. He was glad they were all there and that she had flesh and blood friends to hold her too. Zelgadis tried to stroke the cape over her shoulders, not knowing whether it would be comforting.
"Hey, what's going on?!" squeaked someone who resented not getting an invitation to the group hug. Zelgadis was too absorbed in so much feeling and not-feeling to pay any mind. He wouldn't have noticed at all had it not been for Lina and her essential Lina-ness that ruined everything, every time, even this one fragile moment of bittersweet peace.
"Sure, get in here, Pokota," Lina sighed. "It's your lucky day. Amelia's not wearing a shirt or a bra."