An Unmeant Revelation

Death could come in many forms. A stray arrow. A mine. A fireball. A knife in the back. Or in the front too, that worked even better probably. Hell, it could even follow a pathetic slip on the stairs. Some ways were better than others, yes, but Lappland had always thought she'd be happy so long as she could manage to avoid the most tedious ones. In that sense, sitting on an hospital bed all day long for days on end felt like a pretty clear failure on her side.

There was pretty much nothing to do there. Suzuran -bless that fluffy little girl and her unsuspectable lack of common sense- had brought her a few things, sure. But the snacks were all gone already, and since the lupo's sense of taste had gone off the deep end too she couldn't even quite savour them in the first place. The movies were... well, the vulpo had clearly gone out of her way to try and pick something Lappland might enjoy, but there were only a few she had found interesting. The others she had given up on within twenty minutes. Besides, she'd have ran out of things to watch anyway by that point. Listening to music while lazing around turned out to be even more tedious than she'd have expected. And the books. The recipe book had some interesting stuff, though she had already gone through most of it with Suzuran. And the other was a tale of sort, fiction whose genre she couldn't even recall.

A loud sigh filled the empty room.

"Is this what retirement feels like?"

Unfortunately, nobody was there to answer. Fortunately, she didn't really want that question answered in the first place.

Sighing somewhat laudly, she got off the bed. She was still connected via some tubes to the machinery, but she had enough leeway to walk around a bit, although she couldn't even reach the door without tearing some of said tubes off. Something she admittedly did, once. Man, what a terrible afternoon that one had been. Still, that much movement only marginally helped with her boredom, but it allowed her to keep her legs in shape, or in some semblance of shape at least. As for her upper half, well, the muscles there were kind of gone anyway. As soon as she could put some strength into her arms without feeling as if they were on fire, she'd leave. Pretty soon, probably. She didn't know exactly how much time she had left, but she knew it wasn't enough to waste weeks, more likely months, in rehabilitation, which in turn meant she could skip it altogether. As she kept walking in semicircles, her gaze fell to her missing hand.

What an odd feeling, that one.

She occasionally forgot she had lost it. She would try to grab something with it, only to remember it wasn't there anymore. Sometimes she could almost swear she still felt something from it, as if she'd never lost it. A bit creepy, perhaps, but at the moment all she could see it as was a form of entertainment, however small it might've been.

Yeah, she could use a prosthesis. Was that included in her healthcare plan? Did she have an healtcare plan again?

Then the door opened, and Lappland turned around.

"Yoh, Lapp"

"Oh, hi there. Did the asylum finally kick you out?"

"Look who's talking" Aak replied as he casually made his way to the bed and made himself comfortable.

"Did they admit I'm here?" Lappland asked as she sat down as well, happier than she looked like at having someone to talk to.

Someone who wasn't a doctor, at least.

"Nah, you're still off to who knows where doin' shady stuff for the Doc as far as anyone knows. I heard about you from Warf"

"Oh, so you're using me as a guinea pig? Did I forget to pay the bill?"

"Dunno about any bills but the other part's, like, kinda right" he replied, a bit of excitement spilling from his words as he started to look for something in his bag.

From which he produced a flask of colored pills, offering it to her.

"You know, if I wanted to get high I'd buy some heels" she chuckled.

"Heels can't get you even half as high as my stuff, pal. And they're freakin' unhealthy, those things are the damn bane of ankles"

"And how would you know that?"

"That's one hell of a story" Aak replied as he took the lid off and threw a purple candy into his mouth "But not what I got dragged her' for. Oh, these are just candies. Harmless, I swear. Mostly"

"Said the dealer to the cop"

"Cut the yada yada, would you" he said back as he placed the flask down on the bedside table "And these are the papers you wanted" he added, producing a somewhat large pack of sheets from his bag.

"This many? Ugh, such a pain" she complained, grabbing the papers and giving them a quick look.

"You sure about that? This place's real nice at the end of the day"

"I guess my day's long over then" she chuckled.

"Woah, grim much? But whatever!" Aak shouted as he got back up "The boring stuff's done and gone, so let's get to the real deal!"

"Gather 'round, people, medical ethics are about to get murdered. Again"

"Look here" he ignored her remark as he showed her a small vial containing a blue, slightly luminescent fluid "Guess what this is?"

"Assuming you took some before pulling it out, that's gotta be liquid enthusiasm"

"Very funny, pal. But no! You see, there's this aegirian chick on the landship, I think she's a doctor? Anyway, she's, like, hella frail. For real, medically concerning"

"I can't really help you dispose of another corpse at the moment, you know?"

"Nah, no need t- wait, what? Nah, whatever. Thing is, that chick relapses when she gets hurt too badly!"

"Oh jolly, a love story between addicts. Peak romance" she chuckled.

"Pal. Mate. Dude. Just let me finish" Aak complained, not entirely amused by Lappland's joke "What I mean is that she starts, like, aging in reverse! It's like she flips a switch and bam! Young again! Wounds gone, illnesses gone, fresh as new! It's crazy!"

"You sure you're not high right now?"

"Damn sure I ain't! I mean, I don't really do hallucinogens anyway. Ehr, not usually? And this!" he continued as he nearly shoved the vial in her face "It took me damn forever and then some but I got some samples of her! Just preserving them is a pain though, like, seriously. But behold! This is the trial version of the result of my work! Wanna try?"

"... for real?"

"Let me tell you, Lapp, you could do with losing the past two, heck, even three weeks or so"

The lupo said something. Aak didn't really speak siracusan but, if he had to guess, that was a profanity of some sort she had just uttered.

"You know, kitty, I'm kinda offended"

"... uh?"

She seemed serious, which bothered him.

"Healing is one thing, but reverting back? Come on, that's just... "

"Stop stop, I get it already, not the first time you spew this nonsense. But just a little jab? For science! Come on Lapp, this might be awesome!"

"I like my scars, you know?"

"Uh, cringe"

"Oh, spare me. Anyway, let's skip ahead for a moment then" Lappland mused as she crossed her legs over the bed "What does your little bio gizmo do exactly?"

"If I'm right then it would sorta give you that chick's reverse-aging kind of trait. Well, this thing should be temporary but that's hard to verify without proper tests, yah know. Anyway, take the shot and then we, like... shoot you or something to trigger the response. See what happens from there"

Lappland didn't answer at first. But the two had chatted like that -or, well, almost like that- quite a few times. By then, Aak could understand what was about to happen just by the look in her eyes. He sighed and pulled his ears down as the lupo began to laugh, a laugh loud and heartly, so intense she nearly rolled off the bed.

"Should've seen that coming!" she shouted as she kept chuckling at the top of her lungs ""Shoot me, mate! Doctor's presciption!" I-I can't! Bwahahahahaha!"

"Yeah, funny and all but don't call me a doc, pal!" he said -shouted- back, nowhere near as amused as her.

"And how do you know I won't shrink back to a toddler?" the lupo asked once her -long, long- laughing fit ended.

"From what I've seen, tested and studied, you should stop unaging at around... uh, thirteen? Somewhere around there"

Well, the critters he had managed to test it on went all the way back to fetuses and then, well, died, but theory suggested that to be a matter of not having a long enough lifespan in the first place. Probably.

"Lister here, you're trying to send me back to school or what?"

"You've gone to school?"

"Sorta. And how about the side effects? This is coming from your pouch after all"

"Dunno about those, I mean, that's what tests are for. But this should affect most of your brain too, so a good chunk of memories will be, like, gone. That shouldn't change much for you though, ain't that right?"

She sighed.

"Was that in my files too?"

"Sorta"

""Sorta", he says"

She turned to the jar of candies and grabbed one, only to toss it back inside right after.

"I'll turn that off, Aak"

"Aw, sucks. You sure?"

"That sounds like suicide, you know. Do I look suicidal?"

"I mean, since you asked. Yeah"

She chuckled back.

"Aaahhh, might be. Say, can you play music?"

"Like, nope"

"Thought so"

The feline got back up and put the vial back into his bag with a loud sigh.

"Well, that's that and that's it. See ya, Lapp"

"You forgot your candies"

"Oh, keep those, I got way too many anyway" he concluded as he strolled off, the door opening and closing as he left.

Alone once again, Lappland decided to give the papers she'd asked for a proper read. There were a lot more formalities than she'd expected inside there, but nothing she couldn't deal with.

"... aw, I need a pen too. Damn"

Without a mean to actually fill in those papers, she put the stack back onto the table and sat down staring at the ceiling. Getting a pen wouldn't have been exactly hard to be honest, but she didn't really want to go through all those pages anyway. She had to, and sooner rather than later, but just... ugh. Sooner, yeah, but that still didn't mean right there and then.

Time went by. The boredom, unfortunately, didn't.

At the pit of despair, she decided to close her eyes for a while. Who knows, maybe boredom would actually off her while she was distracted. That would solve so many of her problems.

And so she decided to keep her eyes closed for a while longer.


How long that while actually turned out to be, she had no idea. It couldn't have been that long though, that she was sure of. Proper rests were becoming an annoyingly rare occurrence to her. Still, she blinked a couple of times, giving her eyes a few spare moments to readjust to the light.

"Oh, have you woken up? Good evening, miss Lappland"

She turned around, to the source of that voice. A pretty little thing, standing right next to her bed. Lovely eyes, soft-looking cheeks, fluffy tails... hold on. One, two, three... how did she have that many? Was that a mutation caused by oripathy? Lappland had heard of some cases in which the infection could cause certain appendages such as horns or tails to grow unnaturally large, but that was new. The child looked at her as she peeled an apple, a smile on her face. It was a somewhat forced smile, but that sort of made it even more genuine in a way. Still, who was that?

And then her scent reached the lupo's nose.

She smelled it. She smelled it again, and then once more. She recognized that scent. She recognized some of the things she could smell within it. There was Siracusa inside there. Its alleys, its fresh food, the warm sun. And then there were other things, traces of a place further away, more exotic. But what really stood out was how utterly peaceful that scent was. No blood. No corpses rotting in a dark halley. No disappearances. No aggressiveness. Basically no violence either. Could Siracusa really imprint that kind of scent onto a child? Definitively not the Siracusa Lappland knew.

Or maybe she was just losing it. That child wasn't the only siracusan on the landship, after all, and yet she was the only one whose scent brought the lupo's mind to such peculiar -perhaps pointless- considerations.

"... miss Lappland?" the little vulpo asked again, worried by the lupo's prolonged silence.

"Morsel" she said, and that single word seemed to take a burden off that child's little shoulders, relief appearing on her face.

Aahh, she knows. Bloody hell, she knows.

"I'm sorry, did I maybe wake you up? That wasn't my intention" she apologized with a soft bow.

"Nah, morsel, you didn't" she replied as she pushed herself up a bit.

Morsel. Little Suzuran, her meaty morsel, whose scent she hated to love.

Well, maybe not strictly hers. There was another child she was dating or something like that, a sarkaz probably. But that didn't really matter, not to Lappland. Not at that moment.

Morsel. Little Suzuran. Lisa.

Why, oh why did she have to have that name? Just the sound of it was enough to annoy Lappland. There was someone else with that name, somewhere. A child too, ironically. Someone she... wouldn't have minded meeting, one could say. That wasn't morsel though. Just the fact that they met by pure chance, at Rhodes Island of all places too, meant she wasn't that person. Life never was that convenient. Besides, she had never heard of that other child having nine tails, and she was supposed to be a lupo too. And little morsel's files even said that her parents were both vulpos. It was admittedly a bit weird for that kind of information to be in her files, or at least it seemed weird to Lappland, but the whole file seemed to have been written by someone with some serious problems anyway. No, scented little morsel being named Lisa too was an unfortunate coincidence, sure, but it wasn't anything more.

It couldn't be.

"Miss Lappland? Should I come back later? You don't seem too... "

"Aww, look at you being all nice and cute" she cut her off, ruffling the little vulpo's hair with her only remaining hand.

That child just didn't know how to hide her feelings, didn't she? It was clear that she liked being petted that way. It was even more obvious that she still felt guilty for Lappland's current state. It was all over her face.

So funny.

So annoying.

So... appetizing.

"Ehm... " she stammered, taking a couple of steps without actually walking anywhere.

She wanted to ask something, she just wasn't sure she could actually ask it. Her tails waved nervously behind her. Her ears twitched a couple of times. That actually felt nice against Lappland's hand still on her head. It brought a smile to her face. Too wide a smile, maybe.

She knew what morsel wanted to ask. Answering right away would've been funny, but actually hearing the question would've been... actually, that would've probably annoyed her. Why was she waiting?

"... are your wounds... healing well?" she timidly asked, her eyes drifting on and off Lappland's body, guilt still residing within her despite all the lupo had told her, the lupo and pretty much everyone else involved in that accident.

Oh, that's why.

"You worry too much, morsel" she replied with a chuckle.

"Is that s- waahhh?!"

Without any warning, Lappland grabbed the vulpo by the waist and lifted her up, only to drop her down on the bed, placing her roughly on her own lap and moving her hand over to her back, sort of petting, sort of caressing her. Had morsel been taller, they'd be pretty much face to face.

It should've been a laughably easy thing to do, and easy it'd been admittedly, but even something as simple as that hurt. Not as much as last time, no, but it still hurt. Not to mention how heavy morsel seemed to be compared to their first meeting. Not heavy in general, only in comparison to herself, but heavy nonetheless. Just how much of her muscles had Specter carved off her flesh that night? Well, Lappland could probably get an accurate answer if she just asked whoever was in charge of her, but she didn't actually want to know.

She had never much cared about her weight anyway.

"M-miss Lappland?"

"That for me, morsel?"

"Eh? Ah, yes!" she replied as she remembered about the apple still in her hand.

"Sweet! I could use a couple of snacks right now" she chuckled back.

Morsel tried to offer her the apple, but Lappland didn't seem to have any intention of pulling her hand off the little vulpo.

"You... don't want it?" she asked, somewhat confused.

Rather than replying, the lupo answered by opening her mouth and waiting. Morsel stammered for a few moments, some half-words leaving her lips as a faint redness dyed her cheeks. Lured in by the sight, Lappland moved her hand just a bit further down the child's back, near the base of her tails. A single drop of sweat ran down her forehead.

Admittedly, that seemed a bit excessive to Lappland.

But she didn't complain. She would've liked for morsel to feel a bit more at ease around her but, at the same time, those kind of reactions were just so, so amusing. Besides, the fact that she wasn't entirely comfortable around Lappland meant she wasn't completely crazy, not yet at least. A bit of a shame, really, but in the grand scheme of things that was probably for the better.

When did I even ever care for that anyway? Aahh, just what am I doing? she mocked herself.

Morsel, on her part, had managed to break a little bit of the apple off and bring it to Lappland's mouth. She bit down on it, chewing it a couple of times before swallowing. And then she laughed, an heartily laugh that nearly startled the vulpo. Apples weren't really supposed to be sour, right? And they definitively weren't supposed to have that hot, almost spicy aftertaste.

"That ain't bad" she commented.

"I'm glad you like them" morsel replied, her smile much more natural than before.

Lappland opened her mouth again, and the vulpo brought another bit of the apple to her teeth, with a bit less hesitation than the first time too. On the third bite, Lappland made sure to nibble on her tiny little fingers too, which caused her tails to flutter lovily behind her. Soon enough, the apple ran out, and morsel tried to get off the bed to drop its core down on the small table. The lupo decided to let her go, taking the chance to stretch her limbs a bit. And, why not, take a look at the suirvellance camera. Yeah, that still wasn't turned on.

"Do you want a candy, miss Lappland?"

A candy? She didn't really fancy them but... who knows how they would taste like now. Yeah, why not.

"Sure"

She took one from the vulpo's hand and swallowed it whole, while morsel savored hers for a bit longer.

"... this is... a rather odd taste, is it not?" she asked.

"You think so? This seems... " Lappland started to reply, only to stop when her eyes fell on the table.

The first thing she noticed was the stack of papers.

Right.

Damn.

Thankfully, littlem morsel was looking at her own palms at the moment, otherwise she'd have seen Lappland's eyes grow wide for a second. And luck seemed to be especially on her side that day, since the papers were placed facing down, and the back of the last page was white. Oh, but maybe morsel had taken a look at those while she was sleeping? Nah, definitively not. She was too polite to peek at documents not hers. Phew, what a close call.

She let out a soft chuckle of relief, which left the vulpo a bit puzzled. Not all that much though, if only because she was getting more and more used to such things. She turned around to take another couple of candies, and -wait. Where did those candies come from again? Lappland's gaze had been focused entirely on the papers, but there was something else on the table. The peel of the apple, sure, and a jar full of colored candies. Morsel started sucking on her second helping and offered the lupo another one too, which she took. But, rather than eating it, she brought it to her nose and squashed it in her palm.

"Miss Lappland?"

Ah! Ah, you sicko, these are actually just candies? she thought with a chuckle -both vocal and mental- as the familiar scent of alcohol seeped into her nose.

"Ever drank wine, morsel?" she asked back as she threw the whole candy -smashed as it might've been- into her mouth, downing it in a single gulp.

"I'm still too young for alcohol" she replied, her cheeks beginning to grow flushed.

If you're too young for beers and such then why -ah, screw it.

"Right, right, of course. Those aren't mine though, morsel. Someone forgot them here"

"Ah! I-I'm terribly sorry!" she apologized, briefly falling into a panic.

"Don't worry, it's fine. C'mere, morsel" the lupo said as she turned to sit on the edge of the bed, her lone hand patting her own lap to invite the child once more.

The vulpo hesitated, a wide mix of emotions showing on her face and, even more, through her tails and ears.

You really should learn to -no, forget that. Don't you ever learn, morsel.

She took an hesitant step forward, then back, then forward again.

"A... actually, miss Lappland. There was something I... wanted to ask you about"

"I'm all ears" she replied as she placed her hand behind her ear, the one Specter had partially torn off.

The vulpo twitched at the sight, not quite chuckling along with Lappland.

"Aahh, alright, alright. Here" she said, once again patting her lap.

Morsel walked in place for a short while, her soft steps echoing inside Lappland's ears, her eyes fixed on her own hands. She eventually found the resolve -or whatever went for that in her little head- to step forward, only to suddenly lose her footing. The lupo managed to catch her just in time, morsel holding on to her arm out of sheer instinct, and Lappland took the chance to drop her down on her lap, facing sideways.

At last.

... why again?

Eh, that probably didn't actually matter.

"Comfortable?"

"I... yes" she replied, though she didn't seem all that convinced.

Then again, Lappland had no idea how sitting on her legs might feel.

"'lright, morsel. I'm listening"

Her large ears twitched a couple of times, with one hitting Lappland's nose in the process. The fur felt nice to the touch, soft and just slightly cool, waving morsel's scent right into the lupo's nostrils. She took it in, making no attempt whatsoever at being subtle. Perhaps because of that, the little vulpo looked up, their eyes meeting. Her gaze seemed a bit unfocused, and her cheeks were almost oddly rosy.

Drunk? ... nah, not from just a couple of candies I hope. Tipsy?

"Miss Lappland, if... if you were in a... bad situation, and a friend happened to see you, they would come and help you, right?"

A bad situation, she says. The chances that what morsel meant with those words was even just remotely similar to what Lappland would've used them for were pretty much zero. So then, a bad situation, a bad situation. She could sort of recall having found morsel naked at night in the greenhouse, maybe she was talking about that? Oh, that sarkaz was there too. Was that about her then? Thinking about it, they were... dating, or something like that? Which

- wait.

If little morsel was really going out with that sarkaz, then... did that make Lappland the side girl? Morsel's side girl?

"... ppfhh"

"Ehm... miss Lappland?"

"Oh, don't mind me" she replied as she forced a laugh back down her throat, almost choking on it "But yeah, I guess a friend would help, unless they had a particular reason not to"

"A reason? But isn't being a friend a reason to help already? Though... I think one should help even if it's not about a friend... " she said back, her eyes falling down to her own hands, resting palm down on the skirt of her dress.

Aaww, where the hell did you grow up, morsel?

"There can be a whole lot of reasons to not help someone, morsel, even a friend. Maybe you're in a hurry to do something else, maybe you don't think they need your help at all, or you had a fight with them and don't want to help, or you know you'd just make things worse, or... "

She considered wether she should've continued or not, and quickly decided to stop there. Partially because the next reasons she would've listed would've been... probably not things little morsel could really understand. Likely for the better.

"And... what if they... what if, rather than helping, that friend filmed you and kept the video without telling you about it?"

Woah, blackmail? No, probably not.

"Then they just wanted to keep the memory for personal use"

Agh, maybe I shouldn't have said that one out loud.

"Personal use?" she asked, her tails waving softly "What does that mean? And why would they want to... "

She had looked up while asking that question, but the glint in the lupo's eyes had stopped her halfway through her sentence.

"You were in a bind, weren't you?" Lappland asked, her lips curled into a smile too wide.

"T-this isn't about me- I mean, I am not talking about any particular event... "

Lappland ran her handless arm around her to pull her in, their faces growing closer and closer, her nonsensically alluring scent filling her nose more and more. She chuckled at the sight of her large -maybe a bit oversized, really- ears twitching. Ah. Aahh, aww and ahh, such noiseless vocalizations filled Lappland's mind as she stared at her. Morsel could be so easy to read at times, so simple, and yet some things about her just didn't make any sense. But that only made her all the more alluring.

"You were in a bind, yes. But not really in danger. They filmed you, so I bet it was something embarassing. Poor morsel" she said, her voice equally comforting and chilling "It was that sarkaz, right? Your lover"

The little girl's cheeks, already flushed, turned bright red. Her tails went into an oh so lovely panic.

"I-I-Ifrit and I aren't lov... l... lovers... " she replied, almost shouting at first, barely whispering by the end of her sentence.

"I think you're dating?" Lappland said back, briefly trying to recall what she could about that particular subject. Which, given her current condition, wasn't all that different from gambling.

"I... I think we... are? We haven't... talked about it in these terms... "

"I kinda think you should, you know. Actually, have you talked about this filming thing with her at all?"

As she asked that, Lappland began to run her hand over morsel's tails. The soft fur caressed her skin, and the sudden touch sent a jolt up the vulpo's spine. She looked up, on her face an expression surprisingly hard to read.

"She is not on the landship at the moment"

"Too bad. Oh, does that mean I'm the first one you're talking about this with? I'm honored, morsel. And" she added before the vulpo could speak "I think I can guess why she filmed you, you know? You're pretty darn cute already" she commented, causing morsel to blush even more "But when you're all flustered like this? It's just so... so... appetizing"

That last word made her -them?- shiver. Lappland had brought her face even further down, their noses were basically touching. Morsel was starting to sweat.

"And I think you like it too, you know? Getting all embarassed and... "

"I-I don't!" she interrupted her with what could almost be considered a shout.

"Oh. Sure then" Lappland replied, her voice relaxing so suddenly it nearly left morsel startled "I guess I kinda got off the track there. So, how to put it... " she wondered out loud while her hand casually traced along the little vulpo's legs, slowly moving underneath her dress and up her tighs, causing her to jolt in response.

"Miss... miss Lappland"

"You know how sometimes people take photos at parties?"

She nodded in response, her hands moving towards Lappland's arm but not quite grabbing it, a mix of different feeling on her face. Some, the lupo found quite amusing. Others, however, were very much annoying.

"It's kinda the same thing, really" she explained as her fingers kept moving, eventually hitting morsel's underwear and causing her to let out a surprised, if perhaps a bit weak, shriek.

"H-how so?"

"Well, it's a memory. I don't really know what happened exactly, but maybe you... I don't know, did or said something you usually don't? It's pretty normal to want a memento of such special occasions. I mean, aren't memorials basically the same thing?"

That last comparison seemed to throw the vulpo off. Or maybe the reason why she averted her gaze was the hand sliding beneath her underwear and caressing her privates.

"... I... might have done so, maybe" she replied, tails waving with more vigor than usual as she tried to not recall what happened at the greenhouse that night, not too vividly at least.

"You ok, morsel? You're twitching" Lappland commented as she pulled her even further against herself with her other arm, her fingers tapping gently against the vulpo's little clit, each touch making her jolt in place.

"Miss Lappland, why... are we doing this?"

"Not to be mean but I'm the only one doing anything here, you know?"

"Ah, I... "

She almost apologized, the lupo was sure of it. How endearing. She chuckled as she bit gently into one of her large ears, locking her head in place, facing her chest. Thinking about it, nibbling her ears had probably become some sort of habit by then.

Oh well, there were much worse addictions out there. Hell, there were much worse addictions even inside that very room.

"So" she added as she occasionally licked her ear.

And morsel nearly laughed. Oh, was she ticklish there? That was new. It was new, right? She couldn't really recall having ever seen that reaction before, but her memory was one step ahead of her when it came to rotting away and dying. Not exactly the most reliable source of information, that was. "Bothersome" wouldn't even begin to describe it, really. Had she ever actually licked her ears though? She was pretty sure she hadn't. And to tell the truth, morsel's fur didn't feel all that great on the tongue, regardless of how soft it might've been. But the way she squirmed in response and tried to hold her laughs back? That. Now that was something Lappland could see herself enjoying.

Mostly because she already was.

"... I was saying? Oh, right. You see, morsel, you smell great"

"D-do I?"

"Of course. Hold on, you're not telling me I'm the only one you heard it from, right?"

"You were the first one to tell me that, but... not the only one, no"

She trembled as she said those words, and not in the same way she trembled in response to Lappland's touch.

... oh. Specter told her that too, I guess. Aahh, and here I thought that meatgrinder couldn't get any more lovely.

"So, we've ascertained that you have a nice scent. But you see, morsel"

Lappland pushed two fingers inside the little vulpo, something similar to both a moan and a shriek leaving her lips in response.

"Your smell gets even better when I do this"

She seemed more receptive than usual, that day. Her breathing had already gotten much more ragged than Lappland would've expected, and she was also leaking considerably down there, at least for her standards.

Oh, the wonders of alcohol.

... maybe.

"You really do" she repeated as she moved her face down along her large ear, one gentle bite at a time, eventually reaching the base of said ear and smelling her head, as audibly as she could.

There were many things Lappland had killed for during her life, some more frivolous than others, but that scent... forget killing, she'd cut off her arm at the base of her shoulder if that's what it took to keep smelling it. Sweet. Sweet and pungent. It reached deep within her, it circulated within her, and then it came back out, dragging with it thoughts and feelings the lupo would've never associated with her own self. And then she smelled it again, she smelled morsel again. She held herself back from salivating, somehow, but aside from that she fully indulged in the scent, burying her nose in her head, nuzzling against her large ears, all the while scraping her from within, every touch on her privates causing little morsel to fidget and squirm, both hands on her own mouth to silence herself as her scent grew stronger, luring the lupo even deeper in.

"Hey now, steady breaths. In and out. In. Out" she instructed as she pulled the vulpo against herself while making sure to puff her chest out with every breath "Like me. Breath in. Breath out"

Hold on, I... think she was more for the tender approach?

It was more of a feeling than an actual memory, but she guessed that might've been more reliable at the moment. And so she slowed her fingers down a bit. The fact that the morsel didn't even really seem to notice the difference made her think she was right.

"Slow and steady, morsel. Suzuran. Lisa" she said, each word more hushed than the previous one, with the last one being a mere whisper right into her ear.

"L-Lappland, I don't think we... "

"Want me to stop, morsel? Suzuran? Lisa?"

"I... "

Wether she didn't really know what to say or simply couldn't quite form the sentence through all the... distractions, Lappland wasn't entirely sure. Probably both.

... how about...

Without any real warning, the lupo pressed her thumb against the little vulpo's clit while sliding another finger inside her, curling it up and scratching her from within. Taken by surprise, Suzuran failed to hold her voice in, her moan reverberating inside Lappland's ears as she sped up a bit more, elated by the feeling of her little body twitching in her lap, by her scent filling her nostrils.

"Wait, wait wait hold on stop!"

"As in, you want me to stop?"

"Yes!"

And stop she did with a silent sigh, so abruptly it took Suzuran a few seconds to even realize it. Her hips were still shaking but, if Lappland was reading her right, she hadn't quite climaxed yet. A bit of a shame, honestly, but oh well.

"Aahh, I guess that was kinda rough for you, uh? Sorry about that"

"That's... y-yes, but... " she stammered as she tried to catch her breath, her face as red as it could physically get.

Maybe that was the part where she finally talked about how little sense their whole relationship -or whatever it was- made. Right about time too, honestly. Lappland saw... little reason to bring the subject up herself. Partially because she didn't really want to push the vulpo away, and partially because she'd done much, much worse during her life already, so that ordeal of hers with little dear morsel didn't seem like such a big deal in her eyes. Though it definitively was a "new" kind of deal for her, one she'd have never expected to get caught up in.

"I... I think doing this with you would be... unfair... towards Ifrit" she said, though the fact that she was still holding on to Lappland gave her declaration an odd feeling.

The lupo tried to hold back a chuckle. For a grand total of one second and a third, maybe even an half, after which she decided to just let it out. Because that was just too funny. Was her little morsel really so innocent she couldn't even see how messed up things between them were? No, maybe she knew and simply refused to talk about it to not hurt Lappland? Ah, that'd be even more concerning, honestly. But faithfulness? That was her argument? How was one supposed to not laugh when faced with something like that? And laugh she did, she laughed as hard as she could, until her lungs ran out of air, at which point she simply breathed in and resumed laughing, letting go of morsel to fall down on the bed and laugh, her small weight on her legs reminding her to not roll around lest she threw her off and on the floor.

The vulpo seemed puzzled by that reaction. Right, she couldn't just laugh 'till death, amusing as that'd have been. Talk, talk, she had to say something.

"I mean, I guess! But you said yourself you aren't really lovers, no?" she managed to reply, still chuckling "You're right, if you have a proper partner then you shouldn't get all that freaky with others! Just make sure your supposed partner sees you the same way, morsel"

Suzuran opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out of her throat. Lappland was right, after all. She didn't really know what she and Ifrit were. They were going out, she thought, but... was she just being paranoid? The things they did together weren't exactly the sort of things one did with someone they weren't dating, right? But then again, she and Lappland weren't dating, and yet they'd...

"Besides, some people don't really care if you have fun with others. Oh, but make sure to talk that out or you might end up cheating" Lappland added as she pulled herself back up and moved her hand to Suzuran's head, patting her slightly "That'd kinda suck"

"... I... I see. Thank you for all your advices, miss Lappland"

Ah!

For the most part, what happened in the following five minutes or so could be reasonably described as cuddling. Suzuran caught her breath, somewhat aided in that by Lappland's chest regularly moving up and down every time she breathed, and the hand softly petting her head... well, it kind of bothered her, if only because it was kinda wet with her own juices, but the touch itself felt rather relaxing.

"For real though, clear things out with that sarkaz. Or, like, just make sure you've got your relationships sorted out in general"

"I will"

"Nice morsel. Say, wanna continue?"

Her ears twitched, right into Lappland's face, waving the vulpo's intoxicating scent right into her nostrils.

Aaww, how nice.

"I... probably not... not now... "

"As you wish, morsel"

And then Lappland realized something. She'd been holding her close for quite a while by that point, so... did Suzuran notice the furrows in her flesh? She still had bandages covering them, yeah, but they'd be pretty easy to feel by simply running one's fingers over them. Ah, damn it, that wouldn't do. She already had an habit of worrying too much about the wrong things, being reminded like that of Lappland's experience with Specter would surely depress her. How careless of her. How stupid.

"Oh, and about... "

Then the door swung open without any warning.

"Hey, Lapp. Brought a pen" Aak announced as he walked in "It had kind -woah"

"Look who's back" the lupo replied with something halfway between a sigh and a chuckle.

Suzuran, on her part, looked disoriented for a few moments before hopping off Lappland's lap and greeting the new arrival with a bow, if perhaps one a bit less steady than usual.

"Good evening"

"Sup', child. Are those true?" he asked as he walked up to Suzuran, close enough he would've shattered her personal space had Lappland not done so already earlier.

"Eh? Ah, of course!" she replied, slightly offended by the question as the feline stared at her tails, one of which ducked to dodge his hand.

"Morsel, meet the harmacist. Harmacist, meet morsel. Don't touch her. For real"

"Ehm... "harmacist"? Do you mean pharmacist?" Suzuran asked back, confused.

"Eh, harmacist's fine too, just don't call me a medic. Oh, you're infected. Did you grow those after the infection?" he kept questioning, throwing the pen at Lappland while taking out a notepad and beginning to write down on it.

"Mister... oh, I'm operator Suzuran. Mister... ?"

They stared at each other for a few seconds, both seemingly lost, until the feline realized that he was being asked for his name. Lappland chuckled.

"Aak's the name. So, before or after?"

"I've always had them" she replied with a light pout "Dad has nine too. Oh, but the other vulpos who worked with him didn't have as many... they almost all had more than one though"

"An ereditary trait, uh? This looks kinda crazy, how come nobody's... "

"Ohy, Aak, don't get carried away"

"Come on, pal, I'm, like, asking questions. That's gotta be the most harmless thing I've done since yesterday"

"How reassuring" she replied with yet another soft chuckle.

Though she did make sure to pull Suzuran a bit toward herself.

"Your old man's got nine too, so does your mom too?"

"Oh, no, dad told me only vulpos and some felines have multiple tails, and mom is a lupo"

What.

"Wait, how. If you got them from just one parent it's gotta be a dominant trait, so how come it's not widespread? Because I mean, if it was I'd have heard of it. I guess. Kinda?"

What did she just say.

"Do you, like, come from some village in the middle of freakin' nowhere?"

"My home wasn't really remote, I think, but... I don't really remember if we had many visitors from outside? I think there weren't a lot"

"Alright, and... "

"Aak. Scram"

He looked up.

"I've still got some things to talk with her about. Thanks for the pen and all that, but get out. now"

Aak wasn't exactly a person easy to scare. And as a matter of fact, neither the coldness in the lupo's eyes nor the chill in her words scared him, be it because he wasn't sane enough to feel fear or because he'd been through enough to simply not get scared by such things anymore. But he wasn't exactly stupid either. One could also say that his morals were quite peculiar too. All those things combined meant that he could take the hint, and that he didn't feel particularly bad about leaving a child alone with a Lappland in that state. After all, she was already there when he had walked in, so it's not like he had put her in that situation himself. And to begin with, if she was allowed there she had to have a reason to.

"Fine. This ain't quite my field anyway" he concluded as he tucked his hands into his pocket and turned around, strolling out just as casually as he'd walked in.

The door opened.

And the door closed.

"Is he your friend?" the vulpo asked as she turned around to face Lappland.

Who, on her part, wasn't looking at her. She was holding her head, or rather scratching it, pretty hard too by the looks of it. She had crossed her legs, and her gaze was fixed either on her ankles or on the floor beneath them.

"Morsel. You're from Siracusa, right?"

"Yes" she replied, not really seeing anything wrong with that question "I was born in Higashi, but I've spent some years in Siracusa. I think most of my years"

"Your dad's a vulpo, you said, and your mom's a lupo"

"Yes?" she half-answered, half-asked.

Lappland raised her eyes, briefly, to take a quick look at the vulpo's arm. There were some crystals on it.

"Say, your mom... is she, by any chance, *****? ***** ********"

"You know her?" she asked, suddenly beaming "I didn't expect to find one of mom's friends here!"

A friend, she says.

Some things didn't quite match, but others did. Too many to ignore it. And spreading fake informations to protect her daughter... yeah, that's definitively something that woman would do. She didn't expect her to be able to hide the fact that her little girl had nine tails though, that seriously deserved a lot of praises. Lappland had ignored some signs, shrugging them off as simple coincidences, sure, but there was a limit to that.

"Ah. Ah, ahahahahah... morsel. Lisa. Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Little, fluffy, sweet, wretched Lisa dear" she chuckled.

Perhaps it was that last adjective, perhaps it was something in her voice, or the utter lack of amusement in her chuckle, but something about the way Lappland appeared at that moment caused Suzuran to take a short step back.

"Miss Lappland? Did I do... something wrong?" she asked, ears lying low, tails nearly still.

"Lisa. Lisa, Lisa, Lisa Lisa Lisa LisaLisaLisa. Morsel!" she suddenly shouted, slamming her hand down on the mattress.

"Y-yes! Ah, miss Lappland, your hair!" she said back, but why did she suddenly seem worried?

"Oh" the lupo simply commented as she looked at her hand.

Oh, that's what that was she thought as she realized that the pain in her scalp came from her having torn a few of her hair off Aahh, and I really liked those strands. Can I choke someone with these, I wonder? Eh, not really my style either way.

"Lisa. I've got work to do, you see" she said as she pointed to the stack of papers still on the nightstand "And this will take a while. So just... forget about me for some time, ok? I'll contact you myself. Eventually"

"... sure. But... "

"Scram"

"I... yes. Until next time, miss Lappland"

She waited for a few moments, but no reply came her way. And so she left, confused but, even moreso, worried. About what exactly, she wasn't even sure. As for Lappland, she was still staring at the floor.

Morsel.

Lisa.

Her little morsel, that Lisa. Lisa ********. Of all people, it was her. It had to be her, right?

Aahh, damn it.

Damn it all, to hell and back.

"... so... " she wondered out loud "... I bet her neck is pretty frail... "

She sniffed the air again. Lappland's nose was by no means sharp, especially when compared to that of a vulpo, but Lisa had just left, there was still a little trace of her scent in the room.

She sniffed it again, bringing her hand to her neck as she did so, feeling her own pulse.

"Mine's not that sturdy either though, isn't it?"

For once, the lupo couldn't even bring herself to chuckle.


Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it.