It's All Wrong, but That's Alright

by I He She

One day Vanilla asks Snowsant to look after her pets for just one afternoon. The request, while genuine, hides a little innocent ulterior motive, but things don't really go as planned, neither for Snowsant nor for Vanilla, and the turn of events following a certain accident ends up leaving the former exceptionally flustered and the latter mostly just confused.

It's All Wrong, but That's Alright

One could stumble upon many peculiar sights through the hallways of Rhodes Island. Certain halls within the landship were periodically dedicated to small semi-amateur markets of sort, where the residents who had expertise in arts and crafts not involving large scale detonations and the like could set up a temporary stand and sell goods and services to other inhabitants of the moving vessel. The logistic department often aided in the preparations, partially to ensure nothing too unsavory would end up getting smuggled in and partially to maintain at least a bare minimum of order, and at some point non-commercial booths sprung up as well, turning those events into something strikingly similar to local fairs or sort, especially after they grew big enough to require multiple halls to accommodate all the applications. It had become normal to occasionally wander to such halls to enjoy all manner of things, from food handmade by people not involved with the canteen staff to weird gizmos of dubious utility crafted by self-taught engineers, from fortune telling to baking lessons, from makeshift gaming tournaments to musical concerts.

These events could get a little hectic every now and then, yes, and for a variety of reasons. Most people still remember vividly that one time Popukar got too excited during an arm wrestling competition and accidentally flung Bubble over twenty meters across the hall, the little cerato landing safely thanks to Mountain being around to catch her out of sheer luck. A rumor was once born of a purple-haired woman flickering in and out of everyone's sight as she frantically tried to escape through the booths and stalls of the fair, chased by an eerie, blonde feline with eyes of two different colors. One of the most puzzling events, however, has to be that one time Suzuran took a nap in a quiet corner of a side hall during an especially large fair. Someone placed a few lit candles and a couple of donation boxes in front of her while she slept, causing a certain crowd to form rather quickly. By the time someone decided to look into what was going on exactly, one box had already been filled with coins and paper money in all sort of different currencies while the other was overflowing with paper strips with wishes of all kind written on them. Suzuran herself had no clue who might've placed that stuff there or why, not to mention how puzzled she was at the scene she ultimately woke up to -though she was still kind of happy people seemed to have had fun with that-, but nobody managed to find out who was responsible for it. As for the money from the donations and the wish strips, they all mysteriously disappeared while nobody was looking at them.

Needless to say, that weird incident only made Suzuran's odd fame within the landship grow even larger.

With all of that said, one could actually run into small stalls even outside of those fairs. These could be either officially approved or not, which implied the possibility of finding, shall we say, slightly less savory items on sale. These booths were usually set up nearby the dormitories, in passageways neither too close nor too far from the most used hallways in order to not attract too much attention while still being within walking distance for most potential customers.

The recollection of this particular event starts in one such passageway.

Vanilla wasn't quite what one would call a creature of habit, but she did have a scant few activities she liked to partake in daily so long as her schedule allowed her to, and one of such activities consisted in nothing other than walking her pets around. Rhodes Island had somewhat strict rules about pet animals in truth, despite what Beanstalk's entire existence might lead some to believe, but Vanilla found most of the regulations reasonable. Getting a leash for Stout had been exceptionally easy, given the high amount of metal crabs living aboard the landship. Tiny, Kuro and Puffball required a fair bit more effort to get fitted with a leash as Originium slugs were not exactly the sort of animal people usually kept as a pet, but she still managed to have customized ones produced. The real problem with them had been changing their diet to ensure they wouldn't leave a sticky trail of slime behind them. But she managed to do that as well in the end and thus, equipped with comfortable and safe leashes, Vanilla could take all four of her pets out for a walk through the hallways of Rhodes Island safely enough and without having to mop up the floor as they went. The little critters were fond of the convalescence garden, unsurprisingly, but every now and then they seemed to prefer exploring other parts of the landship as well. It was precisely during one of said explorations that Vanilla, who actually had a clear destination in mind, ended up walking in front of a certain stall.

She had taken a shortcut through a small passageway, one rather tall but also just barely wide enough for two people to walk through shoulder to shoulder, and it's there that she stumbled upon a small booth of sort, as makeshift as it could possibly be. Two wooden boards, propped up by a few strategically placed and perhaps empty shipping boxes, blocked around half of the passageway's width. A curtain was pulled between the two, creating what very loosely resembled a booth of some sort. There was a thin wooden stripe at the front, much too small to be a desk, but as far as exchanging little items and pocket money went it seemed functional enough.

"I don't remember this one... ah, wait there, Stout!" Vanilla called out the metal crab, firmly holding its leash to make sure the lovely little animal wouldn't run off on its own.

"Hey there, missy" a voice neither entirely foreign nor all that familiar called out, a feline covered in fur from head to toe poking his head out from behind the curtain "Fancy some funny candies?"

Vanilla blinked.

"Ehm, this sounds really shady... wait, do I know you?"

"Of course my dudette! Remember me? I'm Aak, Aak!" the feline said, something which could be either excitement or disbelief in his voice as he pushed his index against his own chest multiple times "I took care of your slug's broken spike some weeks ago! That was me"

"... ah!" she exclaimed, slamming her fist on her palm as she recalled that time Puffball ate some mildly poisonous plants and got sick "That was you! You were wearing a mask that time, I didn't recognize you"

"Well, I was trying out a costume for a friend, ya' see, making sure statics wouldn't- ah, forget that. Since you're here, how 'bout a pill? I've got all manners of funsies here" he declared as he pulled a bunch of pill boxes from under the counter -let's call it such- and placed them in front of Vanilla.

She stared down, failing to find a single label of any sort on any of them.

"... you know, Aak, this feels quite... "

"Hey hey, chill out, stop" he interrupted her as he fetched an official Rhodes Island form requesting permission for setting up a commercial booth in that area of the landship, signed and approved by someone whose name Vanilla didn't actually recognize. The stamp seemed genuine though "This is all regular, y'see?"

"Why are you in here though? I doubt you're getting many clients"

"Gotta stay outta the way of certain folks, ya know. Business's business, but some dudes get all upset and grumpy when the stuff you sell gets a tad too fancy"

"Is that so... ?"

That still felt shady, but then again Aak was from Lungmen. Maybe city folks were all like that? Vanilla herself didn't have all that much experience with settlements as massive as those, so she wasn't sure she should judge him by the appearances of his activity. Besides, he did help Puffball that one time, and the document he had showed her seemed official.

"I'm actually in a bit of an hurry though"

"Ain't a problem! 'lright, listen here, take this" he said as he fetched yet another pill box, still strictly unlabeled "You a merc, right? This is pretty much an energy drink, it just comes in pills instead. Hold on, you allergic to milk?"

"Milk? No, I'm not"

"Oranges?"

"Neither"

"Antidepressants or anti-inflammatories?"

"How... does that relate?"

"If you can take those you shouldn't have any silly accidents with this either. Oh, what about whipped cream?"

"Ah?"

"That's just the flavor. These are whipped cream flavored, I've also got a mustard version"

"T-the whipped cream is fine?" she mumbled out, silently wondering whether whipped cream even had a strong enough taste to warrant being a flavor of its own to begin with.

"Have this then, mah dudette!" Aak shouted as he slapped the tiny box into Vanilla's hand "Sample's free of charge! Feel free to tell me how it turns out. Oh, but don't let it sit in the fridge for more than two hours at a time, that'd spoil it"

"Al-alright then? Ah, wait, you two!" she shouted as Tiny and Kuro pulled on their leashes, seemingly having grown bored of standing around in that narrow corridor.

"See ya' round then!" Aak waved her off "Tell your critters I said hi"

"Ahem, sure?"

And so Vanilla walked away, following her pets while directing them at the same time, or at least keeping them from wandering too far off from her destination. And as she did so she looked at the pills she had just somehow gotten. They looked... well, normal, she really wasn't sure how else to describe them. Prescription drugs all looked kind of the same after all. Still, she wasn't exactly certain about trying those out. Maybe she could ask someone more knowledgeable in that field for an opinion? Then again, Aak himself was an expert so...

Deciding to push that matter back and focus on other things for the time being, Vanilla put the box into a pocket and guided her pets through the hallways. The dormitories were somewhat empty around that hour, most people were at the canteen or at some bar to have dinner, but she had heard from Jessica that the person she was looking for was holed up in her room to finish writing a paper or something like that. It didn't sound terribly healthy, Vanilla believed, but it was at least a little bit convenient as it gave her a chance to talk to her in private. Vanilla herself had eaten earlier than usual precisely to have enough time for that little chat. Then again, the matter she had to discuss didn't really warrant all that privacy to begin with.

Either way, Vanilla reached her destination. Another private quarter, within the same dormitory block but located on a different floor from hers. She knocked at the door, waited, knelt down to pet Tiny and Stout while Kuro and Puffball crawled in circles around her, then knocked again. It took longer than she had expected, but the door eventually opened.

"Oh, Vanilla? Good evening"

"Good evening, Snowsant? Can I come in?"

"Ehm, I'm trying to finish up a paper at the moment, so... "

"It's gonna take just a couple of minutes, I promise! And I'll make sure they won't wander off anywhere!" Vanilla said back, bowing down and pulling her pets' leashes a little bit.

Slightly conflicted, a little bit uncertain but also quite curious, Snowsant caved in and let the vouivre in. She could probably take the chance to eat a couple of cookies too, she guessed. And to pet those slugs a bit. The underside of a slug's body was all slimy and gelatinous, touching that gave her goosebumps, and not those of the pleasant variety, but their shells were sturdy and cool and the way they wiggled upon being petted was just oh so terribly endearing. Stout was cute too, and while it didn't have quite as much of a reaction to caresses the flower sprouting from the soil stuck to the upper half of its shell emitted a soft but relaxing scent.

As for Vanilla, she walked to the usual stool and sat down. For as much as she'd have liked to just sit back and enjoy the sight of Snowsant crouched down and petting her four little friends while munching on a cookie, she knew she couldn't take up too much of her time, as evidenced by the curtain as well. While not quite the norm, it wasn't all that weird either for scientists, engineers and the like aboard Rhodes Island to turn their private quarters into miniature laboratories or workshops, although the amount of equipment and materials one was allowed to keep in their room was arguably even more strictly regulated than what was allowed into the landship's actual laboratories, due to concerns regarding the safety of those living in the surrounding quarters. Snowsant's room was one such miniature workshops, and one that looked remarkably messy at that. The disorder was mostly apparent, in truth, and an observant enough person would realize relatively quickly that the place was tidier than most, it just so happened that Snowsant's way of keeping things in order didn't quite match that of most people. For example, the pile of clothes lined up in a corner of the room were all perfectly folded and organized, with a cloth to cover them and make sure they wouldn't gather dust either, they were there only because the wardrobe was filled with something else already. Although what exactly, nobody had quite managed to find out yet.

And since Snowsant was kind of self-aware about the apparent disarray of her room, she came up with the solution of putting up a curtain in a semicircle around the door to hide the tidy mess from any visitor's sight. She even placed a very tiny table and a couple of stools there, because that made it feel like the waiting room of a professional and that secretly made Snowsant feel quite happy. Snowsant herself was an actual professional, in truth, but that was a different matter.

"Ahem, Snowsant" Vanilla spoke up, somewhat begrudgingly distracting the liberi from the little critters "Are you busy next friday?"

"Friday, uhm... wait, let me check" she replied before disappearing behind the curtain to fetch her agenda "I don't have anything planned or scheduled, why?" she added as she came back and sat down, making a little bit of an effort to keep her eyes on Vanilla rather than on the critters walking around between them, the leashes pulled enough to keep them from wandering off past the curtain.

"Are you sure?" Vanilla inquired, her head tilting a little, her tail coiling a bit on itself.

"Yes? Well, I suppose I can't be absolutely sure I forgot about a commitment before writing it down, but that usually doesn't happen... " Snowsant said back while scratching her cheek, her confusion seemingly bringing somewhat of a frown to Vanilla's face.

Vanilla started scratching the back of her head in turn, her gaze landing on her pets for a few moments before moving to the curtain separating them from Snowsant's room plus workshop and finally settling on the liberi herself.

"Could you look after my little ones for that afternoon? I usually ask Beanstalk, but she's swamped with work lately, Jessica will depart tomorrow and won't come back for at least two weeks or so and... "

"Next friday... I think I can? Your pets are so well behaved, I'm sure I can read up on some new research papers or something while looking after them anyway. But I thought they could look after themselves for just one afternoon?" Snowsant inquired, puzzled.

"About that!" Vanilla shot back, the volume of her voice startling the liberi, the vouivre herself apparently flustered too for some reason "It's that, you see... Puffball has to get a vaccination next week, and it'd be better if someone was around to check on him in case he gets some bad reactions some time after the shot"

"Sure then!" Snowsant agreed, her gaze briefly wandering to the slugs chasing each other in front of her "Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on him"

"Oh, I'll pay you of course! I mean, people ask money for this kind of services, right?"

"Eh?! No no, it's fine, really! This is just a favor between friends, right?"

"But I'm taking up your precious time, and on that date too... "

"... what's wrong with that particular day?"

Vanilla kind of looked at Snowsant like the liberi had just said something very silly, or perhaps very sad actually, but she managed to regain her composure quickly enough for Snowsant to decide to not question what that might've been about.

"Alright, then... I broke a thing when moving around some heavy luggage in my room. I'll pay you for the repair of that, alright?"

"Sure, though I can't give you a price estimate without more details on what it is"

"It's a present I got from miss Franka, I think they call it an electric massager?" Vanilla began to answer, only for her personal terminal to begin ringing "Ah, sorry, I think I've gotta take this one... h-how do I do that again... ?"

Snowsant watched in silence for a few seconds as Vanilla fumbled with her terminal, still not quite entirely used to the wonders of modern technology. With that said, she was nowhere near as clueless as she used to be when it came to using such devices and she managed to open the message she had just received within a couple of minutes, perhaps even just one.

"I'm sorry Snowsant, I've got to go" she explained as she got up and put the terminal back away "There's a bit of a situation with that new slug in the Garden"

"What about the massager?"

"It's really not urgent, so... uhm, can you take care of that while watching over them?" she asked, pointing to the little animals accompanying her "I'm sure you can fix it in just a few minutes"

"If the damage's not too serious I think I can, sure"

"Thanks!" Vanilla said, shaking the liberi's hand perhaps a little too vigorously "See you around then!" she concluded before walking out with her critters, leaving an ever so slightly confused Snowsant to her work.

As for the pill box she had gotten from Aak, Vanilla had meant to quickly ask the feline himself for more details about its content on her way back, but when she walked through that passageway again neither him nor his makeshift stall were anywhere to be seen.

So, for the time being, she simply dropped the unlabeled box on her desk.

---

Snowsant had received a spare copy of Vanilla's room key the previous evening, from Vanilla herself. She had heard something about a combat drill planned for that morning, and she initially assumed the reason Vanilla needed someone to watch over her pets for the day had to do with that, but then she found out the drill wasn't expected to last past lunch and, when inquired about it the one time the two stumbled into each other, Vanilla had been uncharacteristically vague about what her commitments for the afternoon were. Maybe they were personal matters she wasn't comfortable discussing with others, Snowsant guessed, and due to that she decided to not press the matter any further.

She didn't even get the chance to anyway, in truth. She had had lunch quite quickly with the intent of getting to Vanilla's room early and free her up for whatever she had to do, but Snowsant ended up finding Vanilla's room empty anyway by the time she got there. Not terribly surprising, maybe, but Snowsant still wondered just what it was that the vouivre had to do to not even have the time to wait for her. Shaking that thought off, or rather not lingering on it too much, she excused herself into the room and put her bags down.

That wasn't her first time inside Vanilla's private quarter, although to say she visited the place regularly would be somewhat of an overstatement. No matter how many times she went there, however, her gaze would always wander immediately to the large cage taking up almost a fourth of the room by itself. The inside was lined with a rather thick layer of soil, with a bit of hay in one corner and a few large stones here and there, not to mention a couple of patches of living grass as well and the small reproduction of a tiny cave inside of which the slugs sometimes slept. A large tank of water was placed right outside the cage, connected to an automatic water dispenser Snowsant herself had fixed a few weeks ago, while within the bars was a bowl large enough for any of the four critters to dip into and bathe, not too close to the bowls meant for their food. All the animals seemed to be asleep at the moment though.

The second thing to catch her attention was the open bookshelf placed in the far corner of the room. And while it did have a few books on the uppermost shelf, that particular piece of furniture was mostly filled with slug food and metal crab food, plus some tools and toys the exact use of which Snowsant wasn't entirely certain about. There was also a little stereo on there though, but she couldn't quite recall having ever heard it playing. Then her gaze briefly wandered over the rest of the room.

Vanilla's quarter was quite on the small side, all things considered, and her pet's perhaps slightly oversized cage only made it appear even tinier than it already was. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of personal items inside there though, even the portable case for her halberd didn't stand out all that much due to being hidden underneath the bed. The furniture was all the typical standard-issue by the logistic department. The only thing hanged on the wall was a calendar with some dates marked, although the only date Snowsant could associate to any particular event was that day's one. There were a couple of knickknacks here and there, but they kind of looked like the sort of mildly intriguing but exceptionally cheap stuff people sold to tourists pretty much all over the world. In this regard the exotic, potted plant which brightened up the room with its lovely but decidedly oddly colored leaves was the only thing truly standing out. Snowsant had no clue what plant that was, but she sort of guessed it was from Vanilla's homeland. The desk stood out a bit as well, if only for its state: a few folders neatly piled up in a corner, a somewhat odd amount of pens stashed on the opposite end, a few branches of another plant the liberi didn't recognize in a little glass vase filled with water. There was also a handwritten note left there and, guessing that to be meant for her, Snowsant excused herself to it.

She was right, as it turned out. Leaving aside the first few lines in which Vanilla thanked her for her disponibility and apologized for not having been there to let her in herself, the bulk of the note consisted in tips and informations about what kind of food to give to the slugs among those on the shelf, which one to give to the metal crab and some details about their habits, as well as a few tips on what to do in the off chance they started fighting with each other. Snowsant was vaguely familiar with all that already, but since that was her first time having to actually look after the little critters all on her own that list put her at ease. The note ended with an invitation to use whatever was left in the mini fridge -which Snowsant was reluctant to do, groceries costed money and eating Vanilla's food would mean becoming an additional expense for her- and a couple of lines about that massager she had asked Snowsant to fix which, unless the note was lying for whatever reason, was stashed in the desk's third drawer on the right.

Having read the entire thing from start to finish a couple of times and then a third one to be really sure she hadn't missed anything, Snowsant turned around and locked the door for good measure, then she walked up to the cage and opened it. Vanilla's pets were very well behaved, more than nearly anyone would expect such animals to be, so letting them roam out freely wasn't a problem. The slugs could crawl up the walls, admittedly, but neither Tiny, Kuro nor Puffball could break open the grate and get into the air ducts so there was nothing to worry about in that regard either. With that said, they had most likely eaten just a short while ago as they usually took a nap after their meals so Snowsant made sure to not rouse them by mistake either. In fact, the three slugs were all huddled together against a stash of hay as they slept, with the metal crab slumbering in a tiny burrow it had dug for itself just a short way away from them. They were surprisingly difficult to wake up too, in truth, which at the moment played in her favor. As for Puffball, it looked perfectly fine.

"Alright, I'll put this here, this here... I think I can move these here... " she mumbled to herself as she made as much room as she could on the desk while moving Vanilla's stuff as little as possible.

That's when she found something a little odd. A small pill box, sandwiched between two folders and oddly lacking any sort of label. Snowsant turned it around in her hands a bit, but the pills themselves didn't quite look like anything she was familiar with. Then again, that wasn't her field of expertise anyway. Reminding herself that snooping around other people's stuff was impolite at best, she put the box aside without quite putting it away. Maybe Vanilla had forgotten it there after all, in which case leaving it in plain sight sounded like a good idea.

At last, Snowsant knelt down and opened the drawer, wanting to see what exactly she had to fix before fetching the tools from her bags. She was confident she could repair a massager as long as the damage wasn't too severe, she had even taken a few spare components with her for good measure, although without knowing neither the exact kind of massager nor what the damage was there was no guarantee the parts she had with her would actually be of help.

The moment she opened the drawer, however, was also the moment her mind froze. It took a good six seconds or so for her thoughts to restart, and another four before she reached into the drawer to pull out its content. That was... probably an electric massager, technically speaking, but Snowsant kind of associated it to a different name.

Which is to say that she had just pulled a vibrating wand out of Vanilla's drawer.

She had kind of heard about them, but she had only actually seen one once, and not even with her own eyes. Back during her time in Siesta, Swire once invited Snowsant out for dinner. Well, they ate together quite a lot during those days in truth, but that particular time stood out due to the restaurant Swire had booked. The meal in itself had been... fine, great even, so long as Snowsant didn't think too much about the bill Swire had been adamant about footing all on her own, but the problem arose once the feline dragged her back to her hotel room to watch a movie together, with more privacy than what a movie theater could offer. It's not that Snowsant was against watching movies with Swire or anything, it's just that Swire had drank a bit too much during dinner and then a bit more once back to their room, even insisting that Snowsant herself had some wine -it kind of felt like she was celebrating something, although Snowsant never gathered the courage to inquire about it- and that resulted not only in her picking the wrong disc, but also in her not noticing the mistake until hitting the play button on the remote.

That's how Snowsant ended up watching a porn movie with Swire, who on her part was quite surprised but not really bothered by her mishap.

Well, Swire herself kind of passed out after twenty minutes or so, most likely due to the combined efforts of the alcohol and of her busy schedule. Rather than stopping the movie and fetching a different one, however, Snowsant stood perfectly still on the sofa and kept watching, telling herself that she couldn't get up without rousing Swire since she was leaning against her, and that perhaps she would want to hear what happened in the movie while she slept. Things did get kind of... weird when Swire woke up a bit later, but Snowsant was pretty certain that part had just been a very, very awkward dream caused by the movie and the wine combined. And fortunately -or not?- Swire had been much too busy the following three or so days for the two of them to get any chance to even talk about that event anyway, although the feline did say a few weird things during that period.

Now, that particular porn movie in itself was by no means extreme, but it did feature the use of a few toys and one of those was the vibrating wand Snowsant was currently holding. The model wasn't quite exactly the same, but it was still clearly the same sort of tool.

Before panic -or something similar and yet decidedly different- could take over her, Snowsant slapped herself out of her stupor, mostly metaphorically but also a little bit physically. She had been commissioned to fix that and so she would do just that, whether her flushed cheeks and quivering feathers agreed to or not!

... but for starter, she decided to check whether there was anything else in that drawer. Who knows, maybe the faulty massager had just been pushed to the very end of the compartment and she was holding the wrong object to being with. And so she pulled it out as far as the rails allowed it to go.

Her mind went blank again, even if for a considerably shorter amount of time, as a pair of handcuffs entered her field of view. Vanilla was no policewoman, but Snowsant could sort of imagine that working for a company like Blacksteel might occasionally put her in a situation which required her to restrain someone, and when she thought about it like that the vouivre having some handcuffs in her possession made perfect sense. What the liberi was having a much harder time rationalizing was the fuzzy padding lining the inner side of said cuffs, which... really didn't fit at all with anything Snowsant could think of when picturing a mercenary's equipment. And was that a blindfold she was seeing tucked in the corner of the dra-

-no, no, that was none of her business. The vibrating massager, no, the electric wand -electric massager, the electric massager- is what she had been asked to fix, nothing else, so she would focus on that one item alone.

So she tried turning it on, for starters, and it came as a weird kind of relief that the tool didn't spring to life. She turned it around to make sure there wasn't some power socket or something of the sort, found one next to an empty battery gauge and, after a very small amount of digging around, she managed to find the charger as well. She plugged it in for good measure, she didn't really believe Vanilla would forget something as basic as charging it up despite what the gauge suggested -it... did happen at first, but she had learned from her past mistakes- but it was still worth a shot. A small light on the side turned on and by the looks of it the wand was charging up. And yet Snowsant had an hunch there probably was something wrong internally. She briefly took her attention away from the wand to take another look at the critters, confirmed that they were all still sound asleep, that Puffball seemed perfectly fine and only then started searching for a screwdriver inside one of her bags.

Having calmed down a bit, Snowsant noticed a small dent in the outer frame of the wand. She wasn't certain but, taking into account what Vanilla had told her, that kind of looked like the sign of a luggage or box of some sort having fallen down on its corner right on the massager. Removing the screws holding the frame together and taking a peek inside, it didn't take long at all for her to figure out what the problem was: the impact had scrambled the components a bit and cracked the internal battery. That seemed like a standard model though, of the same kind she was using in her prototype automatic floor sweeper -it... kind of felt excessive for such a small tool, but she made a point to not think about that- so she had a couple of spares with her already. Extracting the damaged battery without trashing the entire wand required more effort than she had expected, in truth, but in the end she managed to fix it up in a little less than half an hour and left it to charge up.

Just as she began to put the damaged parts away, however, an almost familiar noise caught her attention and Snowsant turned around to see Vanilla's pets waking up. She checked the notes to be sure she wouldn't get the wrong feed by mistake, fetched the food from the shelf and served the little critters their... they probably had lunch already, so was that their afternoon snack? It seemed a little early for that. Well, it wasn't important anyway, so she simply watched them eat for a while, observing Puffball in particular. The slug didn't look any different than it did on every other occasion, even as it slowly made its way out of the cage to freely roam around the floor with its companions, Stout staying a bit behind the trio and watching over them in the most literal way possible.

Snowsant spent a while just staring at them. She wouldn't say she liked those critters as much as Vanilla, far from it, in fact ordinary slugs felt a little ugly to her, but something about that particular trio had kind of grown on her to the point she didn't mind occasionally scratching them on their shells or letting them rub themselves against her ankles. Vanilla periodically trimmed and polished the spikes of their shells too so there wasn't even any risk of accidentally getting stabbed.

Snowsant eventually shook herself out of the little trance she had fallen into and fetched her bags again, pulling her clawhook out from one of them and placing it down on Vanilla's desk. It had been a while since she last did some maintenance on it, so she figured taking the chance to run a check-up on it now was a good idea. That didn't take much time at all, partially because it was something she was used to doing and partially because she just took good care of that hook in the first place. The better you maintain something the less money you have to spend to repair it, after all. ... sort of.

Either way, she put the clawhook back away and fetched something from the other bag, namely her prototype automatic floor sweeper. She had done a bit of research on floor sweeping robots some years ago already but, since her work back then had been purely theoretical, she wanted to move a step forward and personally assemble an automatic sweeper with an improved self-driving program, among other things. She might even manage to make a little bit of money off it in the best case, which wasn't her main goal but it sure would have helped her with... well, with everything, more or less.

So she placed the robot down on the desk. It was... perhaps a little too big, she feared. Cylindrical in shape, the mechanical creature had a diameter of nearly half a meter and an height of roughly twenty centimeters. She wasn't too worried about that, the current design was still highly tentative and there were many parts she had already realized could be either downsized, better arranged or downright removed. But she didn't really see a point in worrying about that while the self-driving system was still so far from finished, since that was the actual bulk of the project. Removing the top lid of the robot required barely a minute, just the time to loose a few screws and pull the metal piece off. Then she connected her portable computer to the robot's main drive with a cable and started typing.

And typing is how she spent most of the following four hours, in truth. Snowsant was more of an engineer than a programmer and, while she knew actually writing the code would be the most challenging part of that particular endeavour of hers, she still ran into more troubles than she had expected. Although some would argue that at least part of the reason why she made so little progress that afternoon was her obligation to look after Vanilla's pets.

In fact, it was after yet another pause spent looking at the critters either napping, eating or playing with each other that she decided to try and turn the sweeper on. She put the lid back on and tightened the screws, for starter, then briefly pondered whether putting it on the floor would've been a good idea. She quickly decided against it, since she didn't want to bother or scare Vanilla's pets, and pushed the power button to turn it on. There was planned to be a remote to do that from a distance at some point in the future, but she hadn't quite gotten around to making that yet. Either way, the sweeper turned on, a perhaps overly sharp noise to announce its activation.

The first thing Snowsant pondered was whether the machine wasn't too quiet. She didn't want it to be loud or flashy, no, but at least a bare minimum of noise would've made it more difficult for people to not notice it and accidentally step or trip on it, especially after she eventually made it smaller.

The second thing she did was jolt, because apparently one of Vanilla's slugs had decided to climb up her leg. She didn't mind that per se, but the critter had made its way past Snowsant's socks and onto her bare skin and, for as cute as they were, having them crawl on her like that still gave her the shivers, of the unpleasant kind. So she gently grabbed it -that was Kuro- and guided it back down on the floor before turning her focus back to the sweeper.

The third thing she did was push the button to make it move.

And the fourth thing she did was nearly scream, because the automatic sweeper sprinted towards the edge of the desk at a speed it really shouldn't have used on such a relatively tiny platform as that, and more generally speaking that shouldn't have been its starting velocity anyway. Its sensors picked up the incoming free fall and managed to hit the brakes quickly enough to keep it from jumping off the desk at least, the robot ending up with only a third or so of its body suspended in the air, but the maneuver still knocked a few things onto the floor, the sudden noise of falling folders startling Vanilla's critters, with Stout and Puffball standing still and observing the commotion, Tiny retreating back into the cage and Kuro approaching quickly to take a closer look.

Snowsant, on her part, immediately hit the power button to turn the sweeper off, pushed it back on the desk to make sure it wouldn't fall and then scrambled to pick up the folders. They were all fully or partially closed, fortunately, hardly any individual sheet had slipped out so she managed to fetch everything quickly. What took her a bit longer to notice was that the pill box had fallen off to, something she realized only upon seeing Kuro circling around it. To make things worse, the box had opened on impact and some of the pills had fallen out too.

"Wait wait wait don't eat those!" she shouted as she dashed forward, nearly tripping on herself in the process.

Startled, Kuro froze in place and stood still as Snowsant scrambled to get everything back, counting the pills only to remember she hadn't counted them before the fall in the first place so she couldn't even be sure they were all there. So she did the next best thing she could think of and looked at every square centimeter of the floor to be as sure as possible she had gotten them all. She really doubted Vanilla would leave -or forget- something potentially harmful to her pets on her own desk, but she couldn't be absolutely sure and didn't want to take any risk. After a thorough search, Snowsant concluded the pills were all back in their box and breathed a sigh of relief, patting Kuro's shell a bit and apologizing for the scare while silently wondering whether it was normal to talk to a slug like that.

Vanilla did it, so it probably was.

Either way, Snowsant decided to take the chance to check on the other critters too, and even pat them a little. She wasn't sure whether she found it more cute or odd that they could feel soft caresses through their hard shells, to be completely honest, but the way they shivered and leaned into her palm when she did was somehow truly soothing. A look at the clock reminded her that she didn't have a whole lot of time left before dinner, meager as it was going to be -meals on Rhodes Island were dirty cheap for the employees, but money spent on meals was money neither sent back home nor invested in her research projects- so she went back to work on the automatic sweeper. She had probably messed something up in the settings for the motor controls and fixing that could take anywhere between a couple of minutes to a couple of hours depending on what the problem was exactly and how quickly she could find it.

With all of that said, there was one very little, very important detail Snowsant had failed to notice: Kuro had actually eaten a couple of those pills when the box fell on the floor and sprung open. And the little slug made her realize that something was off roughly twenty minutes later, when the effects kicked in. And in not quite the intended way either, probably because those pills hadn't been made for slugs.

In short, the sudden, screeching noise of hard metal getting torn apart made Snowsant literally jump off her seat with a scream.

With possibly the most intense mix of panic and confusion the liberi had ever felt on full display on her face, she turned around to search for the source of that brief but intense uproar, the sight greeting her doing nothing but adding to her puzzlement.

There was an hole in the door. Right against the floor, as if someone had somehow thrown a bowling ball with enough strength to punch through the frame and send it rolling out into the hallway. The door itself wasn't all that thick but it was still made of solid steel, which caused something pretty close to fear to crawl up on Snowsant. Then her anxiety turned back to confusion as she took a closer look at the tiny, gaping hole and realized it had been made from within the room. Then Puffball approached the newly made exit, prompting Snowsant to pick the slug up and place it back inside the cage to make sure it wouldn't wander off outside. She grabbed Tiny as well, who snuggled up to Puffball right away, and Stout, who on his part didn't seem terribly concerned with whatever had just happened.

Kuro, however, was nowhere to be found.

Snowsant looked at the hole again, panic taking over her. The slug must had made its way out while she wasn't looking, she had to go after it. She made sure the cage was locked, grabbed her clawhook equally out of reflex and conscious decision and dashed out. The dormitories weren't exactly bustling with people at that hour, but they were also far from empty and, despite the soundproofing, a few people had come out of their rooms to check what that noise had been, their gazes quickly trailing to Vanilla's dorm room due to how panicked Snowsant was looking. The hole in the bottom half of it then prompted a few questions, but the liberi had no time to answer and simply apologized instead as she sprinted after another noise similar to the one she had heard when the door got torn though to chase after Kuro, who on its part couldn't have possibly gone that far yet. ... probably. Arriving at the first crossroad without having spotted the slug made her worry that much more, but the sight of Kuro pulling itself back out of a wall... well, that didn't quite put her at ease either, no. It looked like the tiny animal had somehow rammed itself against the wall with enough strength to make a noticeable dent into it, the rounded down spikes of its shell leaving deep incisions in the steel. Since that wasn't a door, however, the steel happened to be thick enough to stop him.

"Kuro, wait. I'm here, uh... calm down? You don't look agitated anyway though... ehm, come here? Vanilla will get really worried if she doesn't find you in her room with the others when she comes back" she said, trying to not think too much about what the few onlookers -some curious, a few amused, others still genuinely puzzled- might be thinking.

Kuro, on his part, seemed to shiver a little bit before taking a look around himself, almost as if he wasn't entirely sure where he was. Then it turned towards Snowsant and dashed forward, at a speed no Originium slug should be capable of reaching. Snowsant instinctively jumped out of the way with a yelp as Kuro shot past her and down into another hallway, leaving everyone present at a loss for words except for a couple of people who laughed instead. Snowsant turned around as soon as she landed, grabbed her clawhook and ran after Kuro, who had rammed into another wall and pulled himself back out again in the meanwhile, disappearing past another wall as it sprinted into a new direction. Snowsant turned the corner, aimed her clawhook at Kuro and pulled the trigger, apologizing all the while. She was almost certain the hook wouldn't hurt him, she always applied a very soft padding to it whenever she was inside the landship and not actively testing it due to safety concerns, but the act of shooting it at one of Vanilla's pets still filled her with guilt. Her aim was true, at least, and the claw closed on Kuro's spiked shell without causing any apparent damage to it.

With that said, that didn't stop Kuro either. Snowsant suddenly found herself pulled off her feet, falling face first onto the hard floor as the little dashing slug dragged the screaming liberi through the hallways of Rhodes Island.

---

Something had gone wrong.

Well, at least two things had gone wrong. For starter, her afternoon activity ended up taking a couple of hours more than she had expected. Her original plan involved returning to her room by dinnertime but, while the canteen was still open, most people had already finished eating by that hour. Snowsant had probably left the room to go eat something too and came back already, she knew Vanilla's pets could make do just fine on their own for more than a few hours so long as food and water were left for them, but Vanilla had hoped they could get to eat something together. Something other than what she currently had with her, that is. With that prospect gone, however, all she was left with was the box in her hands, wrapped in a thin layer of inconspicuous paper. That box's content was the most important part of her plan, admittedly, but since said content also didn't come out quite as nicely as she had hoped for she was starting to seriously wonder whether she just hadn't ruined Snowsant's day for nothing. There was also the possibility that Snowsant had eaten a bit too much at dinner and now couldn't stomach another- no, no, that was actually not a possibility at all. Which was... a relief, in a certain sense, but also a rather disheartening thought at the same time.

The second thing to have gone wrong, however, came as a complete surprise to Vanilla. As a mystery, one could even say.

Why was there an hole in her dorm room, Vanilla wondered. And why did the marks around it somehow remind her of Kuro's adorable, spiked shell?

She figured Snowsant could answer those questions but, while she had found the door itself locked, the liberi was nowhere to be found inside there. Maybe she had just left for a little bit, her bags were still there after all, not to mention that automatic robot thingie placed on the desk. Vanilla had heard Snowsant talking about that -and about her other projects too- but she didn't dare touch it for fear of accidentally turning it on and then failing to turn it back off. So she placed the box she was carrying down on her bed instead as she greeted her pets, all three of them making their way to the cage's gate to -?!

Where-

-was-

Kuro?!

Vanilla didn't scream, she knew that would startle the other three, but it took her a lot of willpower to choke her own voice down. An hole in her door, one punched open from within her quarter by the looks of it, and both Kuro and Snowsant were missing... no, she still had no clue what could've possibly happened. But now she was worried, greatly so.

"Alright, breathe. Calm down. In, out" she instructed herself, an hand on her chest to pace her breathing "In, out. Ok. First thing firsts, are you three alright?" she asked as she crouched down and opened the cage to let Tiny, Puffball and Stout out, giggling as the critters rubbed themselves against her legs and hands.

Thinking about it again, there was a chance Kuro was just sleeping. The only times her pets didn't come to greet her upon her returning to her room was when they were asleep and they usually slept together, so Kuro being currently sleeping on his own inside the fake cave built into the cage was indeed a possibility, even if a rather unlikely one. So she tried calling out to him, but the slug didn't make his presence known in any way. She tried shaking a bag of slug feed to catch his attention, but that didn't work either. Not surprising, in truth, as their little manger was far from empty so they were unlikely to be hungry at the moment. Maybe he had been left out of the cage then? That didn't really seem possible. She tried looking behind the furniture, under the bed and everywhere else, but she couldn't imagine Snowsant locking the other three in and forgetting about Kuro, especially with that mysterious hole in the door which would allow the slugs to wander out.

... did... did Kuro get injured somehow? She still had no clue how that hole came to be, but whatever had created it was most definitively capable of harming a tiny little slug. If that were the case, it would stand to reason that Snowsant had taken Kuro away to get him treated.

Vanilla tried to imagine something else, a few less unsavory scenarios even showed up in her head, but the more she thought about it the grimmer her conclusions became. So she guided Stout, Tiny and Puffball back into the cage and prepared to leave. Just as she was about to go out, however, she heard footsteps approaching, swiftly followed by a few knocks on her door. Believing that to be Snowsant, Vanilla hurried over and opened the door immediately.

Snowsant was there, admittedly. And Kuro too. But, while the scene on display in front of her dissipated most of her worries, it also left her even more puzzled.

There were two people Vanilla wasn't at all familiar with for starter, two cautus. One was a young child with grey hair, grey fur and a warm -if perhaps ever so slightly troubled- smile. She was holding Kuro in her arms, a rather unusual sight as most children weren't exactly all that comfortable with handling Originium slugs. Kuro himself seemed quite comfortable too, and at a glance nothing seemed wrong with him, his sleep even looked rather peaceful. The second person was also a cautus, but an adult. A woman just barely shorter than Vanilla, although her ears made her look taller. Her hair and fur were of a peculiar color the vouivre wasn't quite sure whether to call red or purple, but what really stood out about her were her eyes, less for their pale blue shade and more because they seemed to be staring off into the distance. Coupled with her slightly vacant expression, that woman gave off the impression of being a bit lost in her own thoughts. But there was a sandbeast next to her, holding on to her leg with its little arms in such an adorable way Vanilla would've asked to pet it right away, had the circumstances been different.

Then there was Snowsant too, of course, clutching her clawhook with an almost palpable mix of shame, sorrow and regret. She had a small bruise on her face too, as if she had fallen face first on the floor.

"Miss Vanilla?" the child inquired, just a moment before Vanilla herself could open her mouth to start making questions.

"Yes, that's me"

"I believe this slug is yours?" the little cautus asked as she offered Kuro to her, being careful to not wake the critter up.

"This is definitively Kuro, I recognize this shell. But, uhm... I mean, thanks, really, he means a lot to me. But what happened? And who are you?"

"Ah, sorry, I should've introduced myself right away! You can call me Warmy" the girl answered, briefly offering her hand for a shake before pulling it back as she realized Vanilla couldn't quite partake in an handshake with Kuro in her arms "And this lady here is miss Ray"

"Hi"

"... hello... " Vanilla returned the greeting.

Ray's voice was... calm. Relaxed. Perhaps a bit too much, even. Something about it made her sound a little bit sleepy.

"Vanilla, I'm so sorry" Snowsant spoke up at last "It was all my fault... "

"H-hold on, I have no clue what you are talking about. No, like, I guess I have an idea or two but they're... no, I really don't. Why don't you come in and tell me everything? Ah, you two too, I don't have much to offer but... "

"I have to finish repairing a few cables the sandbeast chewed into. And Potlid- "

"It's not Potlid! It's Warmy!" the child interrupted her with an adorable pout on her face "We're grateful for the offer, miss Vanilla, but we're in a bit of an hurry at the moment so we can't stay" she added.

"Sure, I understand" the vouivre sort of lied out of courtesy "Ehm, see you around then, and... thanks?"

"Mnh"

"Have a good evening!"

And just like that the duo -the trio, as the sandbeast followed Ray- left, almost as suddenly as it had arrived, leaving a worryingly dejected Snowsant behind.

"Ehm... come on in for now, really"

The liberi complied, almost dragging her feet on her way in, the sound of the door closing behind her reminding her of the gaping hole in its frame and making her shoulders drop even more. Vanilla, on her part, gently placed Kuro in the cage, the other three critters quickly gathering around him to check up on his state. She wanted to do the same, but the slug appeared to be in perfect shape so the best course of action at the moment had to be talking with Snowsant. For at least three different reasons at that.

"You asked me to watch over your pets and I did a mess Vanilla, I'm so sorry, I swear I will foot the entire bill myself and- "

"Wait, wait a moment there, wait, what bill are you talking about? The door? No, like, uhm, start from the beginning? Please? And, ehm, here" she added as she quickly fetched a bottle of cold water from her mini fridge, poured a glass and offered it to Snowsant "You don't look alright at all now... "

Snowsant seemed a little hesitant to take the glass but she still grabbed it, gulped its content down and then began telling Vanilla everything. The story started out in a perfectly normal way: Snowsant had arrived at Vanilla's room, checked on her pets, made sure they had food and that the water dispenser was working, let them out of their cage because she knew Vanilla didn't like to keep them confined, fixed the thing Vanilla had asked her to repair -her feathers quivered a little bit at this point- and started working on her automatic sweeper, still lying motionless on the desk.

It's when the story mentioned a pill box getting knocked off said desk that Vanilla raised both eyebrows.

"A pill box?"

"Yes. I left it on the desk, there wasn't any label on the box but I didn't think much of it, and then Kuro must have managed to eat one of those pills before I could retrieve it, I hadn't counted them so I didn't notice one was missing and... thinking about it now those were some sort of combat stimulants, weren't they? You work for Blacksteel, it makes sense you would have something like that avaiable... "

It only then dawned on Vanilla that the box Aak had given her had completely slipped out of her mind. She had put it... somewhere in her room, meaning to look into it further at some point, then failed to find it again and ultimately forgot all about it. But she couldn't quite bring herself to interrupt Snowsant to correct her on that mistaken assumption at the moment.

"Then Kuro, he... he rammed into the door and tore an hole into it" the liberi continued, her dejected gaze trailing to said door, Vanilla's own eyes following along with a mixture of disbelief and concern "And got out. I wasn't sure what happened at first, I moved the other three back into the cage because they might have wandered outside otherwise then I went out and looked for Kuro and he was in the hallway, but he was ramming into the walls so I tried to catch him" she continued, pulling a trigger on her clawhook to make the hook close without shooting it, perhaps to bring attention to the padding "And I kind of did but that pill was so potent he pulled me off my feet and then I got dragged through the hallways and I tried to stop him but he kept making dents into the walls and everyone moved out of the way because they didn't want to get stabbed by his shells and then- "

"H-hey Snowsant, calm down. Breathe slowly, ok? Breathe in, slow, then out, you're... well, you're not really hyperventilating but... like this, ok?" Vanilla interrupted her, grabbing the liberi's hand and placing it on her own chest to make her feel her pulse "It's ok, just... calm down?"

Snowsant's gaze, which had fallen to the floor, did come back up after that, but Vanilla wasn't sure how to interpret the change in her expression.

"... we -well, Kuro, I guess- ran into Ray and Warmy at some point. Almost literally. I think the sandbeast's presence put him on edge because he stopped, then Warmy managed to calm him down, I-I forgot to ask her what she did exactly but I think they're both used to dealing with wild animals? She gave him some herbs and after a while he fell asleep. Then we came back and met you and... I'm sure I will have to pay for the damages... "

"Ehm... "

Vanilla wasn't sure where to start, but since she had to she decided to go with the first thing which came to her mind.

"Those pills were, uh, they had a warranty for incidents like this! Don't worry about the money. Seriously, don't! For real!" she started, stressing that aspect as she knew how tight Snowsant's finances always were.

As for what she had just told her, that was less of a lie and more of a twisted truth. She had met a lung man not long after her first encounter with Aak, a tall one with a quite peculiar appearance and a somewhat laid-back attitude, who had given her his agency's card and told her to contact him were Aak to cause any serious problems. She found out later by asking around that this man -who went by mr. Lee- was apparently a reliable person, but she wasn't sure whether she should hope that a few damaged walls were enough to warrant calling him or not. Then again, she wasn't really sure what he meant exactly by "serious problems", so... well, it was worth a try. But that would come later, for now she had other things to worry about.

"So, uh, have you eaten anything yet?"

"... yes, Warmy insisted about eating something before coming back here since Kuro was in good shape and she said I didn't look good at all... she's a great chef though, you should really try to get a taste of one of her dishes" Snowsant replied, some light returning to her face.

"I will! Now then, how about you take a warm shower? You really look like you need it. There, use mine" Vanilla offered, a certain spring returning to her voice as well as she pointed towards her bathroom.

"Oh, no really, I can't impose any more than this, and- "

"Please!" Vanilla cut her off, slapping her hands together and bowing a little in what probably was supposed to be some sort of supplication, her tail standing perfectly still behind her "I, uh, I had a plan for today but it's kinda a mess now so -no, forget that! You looked after them so please let me at least offer you this! And one other thing then, but I need a moment so take your time! If... if I'm not asking too much, I mean... " the vouivre screamed at first, barely whispered by the end, her hands having vaguely pointed to her pets' cage at some point.

Snowsant, on her part, was puzzled enough to not know what to say at all.

"Well... I... ehm... alright... ?" she eventually agreed, partially out of simple courtesy.

"Thanks!" Vanilla burst out, making an effort to not grab Snowsant's hands for a shake because she was almost sure that would just startle her even more "Take your time! Relax! And there's some clean towels in the drawer!"

"I-I'll do... thanks... ?"

And so, with little to no clue what was actually going on, Snowsant disappeared into Vanilla's bathroom. She had nothing to change into, the liberi realized as she started getting undressed, but she figured for that once she could just put the same clothes -underwear included- back on and fetch something a bit cleaner later. She had gotten a bit of dust and dirt on her during the chase -if we want to call it such- but it's not like she was actually in dire need of a change anyway after all.

As for Vanilla, she sprung to action the moment the bathroom's door closed behind Snowsant. The first thing she did was check on her pets again to make sure were all in good shape, especially Kuro who hadn't woken up yet. Having confirmed that, she fought off the urge to give them a bit more feed -they were adorable when eating, but giving them too much would eventually end up making them gain too much weight- and looked for something to patch up the hole in the door with, even if only as a stop-gap measure. The only thing she found, however, was a cardboard box she hadn't thrown away yet, so she tore it up and fixed the pieces to the door with some duct tape. Then she grabbed a chair, taped two pieces of paper with 'danger' written on it to both sides of the backrest and placed it outside to warn about the bits of metal facing outwards. It was unlikely, but someone in an hurry might still go by without noticing them and get hurt. After that she decided to take a small risk and move Snowsant's sweeper thingie off the desk, carefully placing it down in a corner of the room and heaving a sigh of relief when the machine didn't turn on. Then she put everything on the desk away, pausing for a moment to gaze at the pill box before storing it in a drawer.

And, at last, she moved the box she had carried with her all the way there from the bed to the desk, sat down and found herself fidgeting more than she had expected as she waited for Snowsant to be finished with her shower and come back out of the bathroom.

That didn't take much at all, in fact the liberi walked out not ever four minutes after Vanilla had sat down. She looked rather... well, dry, which admittedly surprised the vouivre a little bit given how little time she had spent inside there. She had heard that some liberi's hair -and feathers- dried up quite quickly, maybe there actually was some truth to that?

"Ehm, thanks again for the shower, and also... sorry for the... " Snowsant began to apologize again, stopping halfway through as she noticed something on Vanilla's face which made her believe finishing that sentence wouldn't have helped anyone with anything "... what's this box for?" she changed the subject instead, and if the light which seemed to appear on the vouivre's visage was of any indication that had been a very good choice.

"This is a thing I made specifically for you!" Vanilla nearly shouted in response as she jumped to her feet, her tail coiling on itself and then stretching out as she grabbed the box's wrapping with both hands and tore it off, revealing a perfectly ordinary box underneath it "Happy birthday, Snowsant!" she declared as she opened it.

Snowsant, in response, blinked. Perhaps due to the sentence, perhaps due to the sight, it took her a few moments to fully process what had just happened and come up with an appropriate response. She figured the first thing to do had to be clearing up a little, decidedly important detail.

"My... my birthday isn't today though?"

Vanilla's tail fell to the floor, the sound of scales hitting metal briefly filling Snowsant's ears.

"... eh?"

"My birthday's not this month, Vanilla... ?" Snowsant said, deeply confused but also feeling a little guilty for some reason.

"But I asked the folks over at HR... they told me your birthday was listed as being on the seventeenth of September" she explained, something similar but not quite as intense as panic showing through the way she was aimlessly waving her hands around.

"No, it's on the seventeenth but of October, not September... you said that was on my files?"

"Yes, I even asked them to check twice, and even to make sure those weren't someone else's files to avoid making a mistake"

"Then... I think I only checked the birth year when I had to review my files before they got updated into the database, so I... didn't see that it was wrong before submitting them, I guess... ?"

The data Snowsant had handed in was actually corret but, unfortunately, the person who added them to the system back then just happened to be between their ninth and tenth cup of coffee back during their second extra shift in a row and accidentally mistyped the date.

"So... it's not today then... I thought it was weird you had nothing planned for your birthday... "

Snowsant swallowed a lump of saliva. She didn't really do anything special on her birthday anyway, nothing she deemed worthy of being called a celebration at least, partially because she just never saw that much of a point in celebrating one's birthday and partially because, well, doing so would require some sort of additional expenses. But a knot in her throat was keeping her from telling Vanilla any of that, so she forced herself to change the subject again.

"B-but anyway! This is a splendid, uhm... is this a... cake?" she said, bringing up the content of the box instead.

Taking into consideration Vanilla's mistaken assumption about her birthday, together with the set of plates and forks stuck to one side of the box and a knife large enough to cut the thing into slices secured to another side, it made sense to think that was a cake, but the look wasn't quite like anything she had ever seen before. It looked... it's not that it looked bad, no. The shape wasn't right, one side was bigger than the other, the frosting -assuming the layer covering it was indeed frosting- was uneven and left some parts exposed, leaving exposed what probably was supposed to be sponge cake but sort of looked more like plain sponge. Rather than any of that, however, it was the cake's color which looked... sort of...

... is... is this... poisonous... ? No, wait, Vanilla would never... but vouivres are renowned for their incredible constitution and strong immune system, so maybe there's something in here which they can eat fine but is poisonous to other -no no no, you're starting from the wrong assumption! So, perhaps...

"Ehm, Snowsant?" Vanilla then asked, tapping her on the shoulder and startling her out of her thoughts "Does it really look that bad?" she inquired, the mix of disappointment and resignation in her voice causing Snowsant to immediately apologize for whatever expression had apparently crept up on her face.

"No no, it's not bad at all! It's just... peculiar! That's the word I was looking for, I promise!"

"No, it looks bad, I know... " Vanilla replied, scratching the back of her neck with her hand and the floor with her tail "I asked Blue Poison to help me with it, but this... but the taste is great! ... good! ... decent... ? I'm terribly sorry, really" she continued, her shoulders dropping further and further with every word "I thought I'd do something for your birthday but I ended up making a mess of everything... "

Snowsant almost wanted to ask who this Blue Poison was, the name sounded vaguely familiar but she couldn't associate it to any face in particular, but that could wait.

"No really, I'm grateful" she tried to cheer Vanilla up, grabbing her hand and holding it up "I know what it feels like to make a mess of things, trust me, I won't think badly of you just for something like this. And the date might be wrong but you still prepared this for me with your own hands, that's... I'm moved Vanilla, really"

"You're not angry that I got everything wrong?"

"I made a mess of your door and the hallways myself so I think I'm the one who should really apologize, all things considered... "

The silence which fell between them wasn't exactly awkward, but it was still a bit heavy.

"S-so, let's eat?" Snowsant spoke up, backing away and walking to the other side of the desk "Can't let it go to waste, right?"

Vanilla shook her head a bit, then slapped her cheeks a couple of times, coiled her tail on itself once before stretching it out, and at last smiled again, something about that entire process bringing a soft, upward curl to Snowsant's own lips as well.

"Alright then!" she declared as she set the two plates, handed Snowsant her fork and fetched the knife to cut the first slice, adjusting the size according to her feedback "It should be blueberry flavored, you like those, right?"

"Oh, I do, yes" Snowsant replied as she stared at Vanilla cutting a slice for herself as well, using her own lack of knowledge in the field of bakery to not ask about how a bright, almost glowing green frosting or a dark white sponge cake could be blueberry flavored.

Truth be told, it was a little hard to tell which one between them was more surprised when they bit down on the cake, which was either surprising or worrying considering that one of them had baked it in the first place.

The taste was... there definitively were blueberries inside there, yes, but there was a sort of acrid aftertaste which didn't mesh at all with their sweet tartness. The frosting was a bit too hard and while the cake itself was soft to bite into, more than its appearance would suggest in truth, some parts here and there had an odd, unpleasantly spongy texture to them. Even the scent wasn't quite entirely alluring, being just a bit too pungent to the nose to truly be enjoyable.

"... I'm sorry" Vanilla apologized yet again, her shoulders dropping once more.

"Was this your first time baking a cake?" Snowsant asked while trying to make a show of finishing her slice.

"I've made a few cookies in the past, does that count?" she answered while eating what was left of her own slice.

That probably doesn't?

"It can be improved for sure but it's not terrible, wouldn't you say?"

"It... it isn't, maybe, but given the occasion... "

"Vanilla" Snowsant interrupted her, grabbing her hands again and bringing them up, their eyes meeting, a not too small part of the liberi wondering whether she hadn't taken one step too many towards Vanilla "It might not have come out exactly the way you wanted it to, but there's still a month to fix it. And I... wouldn't mind receiving another cake from you, really" she added, blinking rapidly as an odd way of keeping herself from averting her gaze.

Vanilla, on her part, returned Snowsant's grasp after a little bit of hesitation.

"I promise I'll get it right next time!"

"And... uhm, I hope I'm not being too brazen with this but... "

"Mnh? What?"

"Could you... n-no, never mind" she dropped the subject, out of fear asking Vanilla to rethink the entire aesthetic of the cake might cause her mood to drop again.

"Can I at least do something for you? Something proper I mean. You did look after Kuro and the others after all, and that incident was kinda my fault too"

Snowsant opened her mouth to speak then paused, something in the way Vanilla was looking at her keeping her from outright refusing the offer.

"If you insist, but I don't really have anything in mind... "

"Wait, did you say you fixed my massager?"

Snowsant froze.

"I-I did?"

"That's it then, I'll give you a massage!" she declared, happily shaking Snowsant's hands.

"A-a-a massage?!" the liberi shouted back, that one movie she accidentally watched with Swire back in Siesta playing again in her mind.

"I'm not an expert but that's what the massager is for. Trust me, it's an incredible experience!"

"Well, I, that, uhm... " Snowsant tried to find the words, but a certain something in the enthusiast, innocent look Vanilla was throwing at her short-circuited her thoughts "H-how much should I strip?" she asked, realizing what she had just said too late, her cheeks turning a bright red.

"However much you want?" Vanilla said back, more confused than anything by that question.

"Ho-howev-I-I'm borrowing your bath again!" Snowsant shouted, darting off and closing the door behind herself with a lot more composure than her dash would've led one to expect.

"Sure... ?" Vanilla spoke to the air, puzzled by that weird reaction.

So, while the vouivre checked the massager more out of habit than out of doubt Snowsant hadn't fixed it, the liberi tried to regulate her breathing on the other side of the door, finding only a mild success in that and resorting to washing her face again to cool herself down a bit. She didn't believe there to be any sort of second meaning to Vanilla's offer, but that movie had also started out with a massage, and the tool was even mostly the same so her mind just worked on its own to go to places she didn't quite want it to. That was somewhat of a regular occurrence, in a certain sense, but usually her thoughts wandered towards odd research topics and detailed saving plans to cut down expenses, not to... well, that sort of stuff. With that said, a massage... how was that even going to work? No, that wasn't quite the right question. How much clothing was she supposed to keep on? The coat had to go, of that much she was certain, but other than that... maybe the shirt? The skirt was definitively staying on, she was absolutely certain of that. Maybe her shoes? She wasn't certain about that, but she had always thought of massages as something you received while bare-footed for some reason.

Truthfully, Vanilla was a little confused by the sight of Snowsant walking back out of the bathroom with her shirt and coat folded under her arm. The latter made perfect sense, and the former too in truth, she just hadn't quite expected that. It was mostly the fact that Snowsant was also holding her shoes in her other hand that puzzled her. That and the faint redness of her cheeks, which reminded Vanilla to not stare at her chest.

Without quite realizing it herself, Vanilla curled up her tail on itself ever so slightly.

"Do you want to sit on the chair? Or would you rather lie on the bed?"

She had originally meant to make Snowsant sit down, but looking at her now the liberi looked kind of stressed and perhaps the bed would help her relax a bit more. Snowsant, on her part, ran her gaze a bit everywhere around her before settling on Vanilla.

"The chair's perfectly fine, thanks" she replied, because taking the bed would make her feel like she was taking advantage of Vanilla's kindness.

"Make yourself comfortable then" the vouivre spoke as she pulled the chair back, turned it around and then pushed it forward a bit once Snowsant had settled on it, sitting sideways to leave her back aviable "You can put those down" she added, making the liberi realize she was still holding her temporarily discarded clothes.

"Right"

With a deep breath which made Vanilla bend her neck in confusion, Snowsant placed her coat and shirt down in front of herself and the shoes next to her feet, then closed her eyes and tried to not think about the fact that she was wearing only her bra on the upper half of her body in front of someone else. She had walked around in a swimsuit back in Siesta, true, but swimsuits and underwear were completely different things.

As for Vanilla, she parted Snowsant's hair and feathers, pushing them over her shoulders to leave her back completely bare save for the straps of her bra. Her gaze briefly trailed down to the liberi's tail feathers, short enough to remain hidden from sight when looking at her from the front. And from everywhere else too, given the long coats Snowsant liked to wear. It was an unusual sight, one which Vanilla found surprisingly captivating, perhaps due to the soft quiver of those feathers. But staring at them wasn't what she had offered to do, so she shook herself out of it and rested the head of the massager on Snowsant's upper back instead, the cold contact making the liberi shiver for a brief moment.

"Tell me if the intensity's too high, ok?"

"Sure!" Snowsant answered, more loudly than she had meant to.

Then Vanilla turned the massager on, a loud buzzing quickly filling the room -well, not really, it was actually a pretty soft noise, just not to Snowsant's ears for a series of reasons- as she pushed it down gently on the liberi's shoulder. A tender vibration began to shake her muscles from within, releasing tension she hadn't quite fully realized was there to begin with, a relaxed breath escaping her as she tried to figure out whether she wanted to lean back into the massager or fall down on the desk instead and ultimately settling for doing neither, if only for the time being.

Vanilla, on her part, figured from Snowsant's reaction that she was liking the massage and slowly dragged the gently vibrating tool across her skin, tenderly moving from one shoulder to the other, her own experiences from massaging herself with it to guide her hand. Snowsant's shoulders dropped a little, the feathers in her hair quivering ever so slightly as she allowed herself to melt into the surprisingly soothing sensation. Vanilla considered placing her free hand on Snowsant's shoulder to rub it a bit, but decided against it as she didn't really know how to do that. Having received a massage from Perfumer once made her much too aware of just how great the difference between an amateur and a professional's touch could be, after all.

With that said, she had a feeling Snowsant was falling forward bit by bit, her head beginning to softly sway left and right as the massager moved all over one shoulder before returning to the other. That probably wasn't good, she was a bit too close to the desk to lie down on it comfortably. So she ended up grabbing her anyway. Snowsant didn't really make any noise but, outside of Vanilla's field of view, she grabbed her own knees with a bit too much force. The vouivre did notice a slightly more intense quivering of her feathers, but didn't attribute any particular meaning to it and simply held Snowsant's back up as gently as she could while continuing to hold the massager against her.

Snowsant, on her part, made an effort to think nothing of that physical contact, almost but not quite succeeding at it. She could still feel her muscles relaxing, but the combination of that particular tool, of being almost naked from the waist up and of Vanilla's warm hand on her kept forcing her mind back to that one much too embarrassing and also kind of hazy night in Siesta, which made nervousness return to her mind.

"Are you sure you don't want the bed?" the vouivre's voice startled her "It kind of looks like you could use lying down for a while. Really"

Her courtesy, mixed with a bit of confusion and aided by a modicum of hastiness, took action before Snowsant could actually think about her words.

"Thanks, that'd be really nice. ... ?!"

Gripping her knees again, Snowsant tried and almost succeeded at justifying her answer to herself by thinking about how rude it'd be to turn down that offer twice in a row.

"Do you want the pillows?"

Snowsant really, really didn't want to go that far, but at the same time she had a feeling burying her face into a pillow might help her focus on the actual massage without thinking about anything else.

"If it's not asking too much, one would be nice... "

"Sure!"

Vanilla sure seemed to enjoy being of help at least, and the smile on her face did put Snowsant quite at ease too. That made the liberi feel a fair bit less guilty as she lied face-down on the bed, sinking her face into the soft pillow and being silently thankful that her race was not endowed with a particularly keen nose. The sheets themselves didn't really smell like anything to her, but she was sure a feline or a perro would be able to smell Vanilla's scent on them from so up close, not to talk about a vulpo.

The feeling of the mattress shifting next to her as Vanilla sat down brought her thoughts elsewhere.

"I'm starting again, ok?"

Snowsant muttered something through the pillow and, guessing that to be her way of telling her to proceed, the vouivre turned the massager back on and pushed it down on Snowsant's back again, applying a bit more pressure this time, a soothing warmth slowly spreading through the liberi's muscles as soft vibrations reverberated within them, her body sinking ever so slightly into the sheets. She briefly wondered whether those were the standard-issue ones every dormitory room on Rhodes Island came with or if Vanilla had changed them out, they felt a bit softer compared to Snowsant's, but the question drifted out of her mind rather quickly.

And quickly enough Snowsant turned her head to the side too, because for as much as she tried to she just couldn't breathe properly with her face sunk into a pillow. Not much, just enough to be able to breathe in and out, but that also allowed her to catch a glimpse of Vanilla's tail. The vouivre, sitting next to her and maneuvering the massager with -if we want to be completely honest- more goodwill than skill, had a rather large tail. Nowhere near as thick as the one of that archosauria from Sargon's rainforest, no, but decidedly longer. In fact, Vanilla's tail was probably the biggest vouivre tail Snowsant had ever seen, although she hadn't exactly seen that many in the first place. With that said, size was not the only trait of that tail which made it stand out among all the others from her kind: it was also smooth. Now, being a vouivre Vanilla's tail was naturally covered in scales to 'sleek' might've been a better adjective to describe it, but the main point was that every other vouivre Snowsant had ever happened to meet had a tail with spikes along its length, or at the very least on the tip, but that wasn't the case at all for Vanilla. That fact, combined with its intense, slightly dark green color, made that tail feel kind of... reassuring, somehow? Snowsant had occasionally found herself wondering how it would feel to hug it.

There was also the fact that Vanilla's tail had grown a lot between their first meeting and the present day, to the point Snowsant would've mistaken her for a child still in the midst of her growth spur had she only looked at her tail and not at the rest of her body. But that was a different matter.

And so, with the unexpectedly relaxing vibrations of the massager on her back and the oddly soothing sight of Vanilla's tail in her field of view, Snowsant managed to forget about everything and just melt into the sheets, not even paying any attention to her own partial state of undress anymore.

Vanilla, on her part, had also been staring at Snowsant's tail, or rather at her tail feathers. They were short, although as far as Vanilla knew that length was more or less ordinary for a liberi. They were a little further up along her back compared to the vouivre's own tail and, just like her hair and the few feathers hidden within, those were also of a very pale shade of gray, although they turned black towards their tips.

Snowsant seemed quite relaxed now. Vanilla occasionally got the feeling the liberi was also staring at something out of the corner of her eyes, her own tail slithering a little along the floor whenever she got that impression, but she guessed she was staring at Kuro and the others anyway.

Then a thought popped into her mind.

All vouivres, just like the archosauria, had strong muscles in the lower back, for obvious reasons. This was generally true for all races with tails, but vouivres and archosauria in particular usually had larger, heavier tails than most others which entailed more dense muscles to support them. Precisely because of that they mostly loved a good, intense massage on their back around the base of their tails, to help relax those muscles which were constantly put under strain by the weight of their own tails. Vanilla knew liberi couldn't have quite the same internal structure, among all the races endowed with tails theirs had to be the lightest after all, but she guessed they would still find a massage around that area to be a soothing experience.

So she pushed the head of the electric massager down on Snowsant's lower back, right next to the area where her tail feathers sprouted from her flesh and skin.

Startled, confused and panicked as well, even if only for a brief but intense moment, Snowsant let out something which could be described as either a shriek, a chirp or a groan or, more likely, a weird mixture of all three. That, in turn, nearly made Vanilla jump up, her hand pulling the massager away from Snowsant.

"Sorry! Did I hit a bad spot? Was it too intense?" she frantically inquired, the way her tail kept coiling and uncoiling on itself briefly hypnotizing Snowsant "That was, ehm... "

"N-no" Snowsant interrupted her, pushing herself up on her elbows just enough to turn around a bit and meet her gaze "I was just surprised, that's all"

The visible redness on her cheeks told Vanilla there might've been something else at play, but she guessed asking about that would just make things weird.

"I'll stick to your upper back then, sorry"

"... a... actually" the liberi said, whispered almost, as she slowly sank back onto the sheets "That was... quite nice, so... uhm... j-just be gentle, please... ?"

Vanilla bent her neck to the side a little bit. Snowsant's lower muscles were especially sore so pushing the massager too strongly into them made her feel uncomfortable, that's what she was guessing to be the case, but something she couldn't quite place about the way the liberi had spoken felt sort of odd.

"I will, sure" she replied, trying to not think much about that and simply guiding the vibrating head down around the base of Snowsant's tail feathers.

Now, Vanilla was right on one thing, the other races didn't have muscles as developed as vouivre and archosauria in that particular area, although some rare exceptions did exist. What she hadn't considered was that they had a bit more nerves gathered there instead, and liberi in particular. That was due to the fact that, since their feathers lacked actual nerves on their own, the flesh said feathers were attached to compensated this deficiency by being especially sensitive itself, in order to better catch and analyze every vibration coming from the feathers. This was somewhat of a vestigial trait, in a certain sense, but that is beside the point.

In short, having the massager held against her lower back was doing to Snowsant things the liberi wasn't even really sure she was comfortable with, not in front of someone else at least. Vanilla, on her part, was sticking to her word and avoided fully resting the tool on her, softly holding it against her skin instead, but since Snowsant very rarely -if at all, really- touched herself there in such a way, she wasn't used to that sort of stimulation to begin with.

She nearly bit into the pillow, then remembered that that wasn't hers and bit on her lip instead, a tender tingle slowly growing more intense in her lower back and gradually spreading to her nethers through her belly, a sensation which would've been rather pleasant by itself but which became a fair bit uncomfortable due to the circumstances.

Vanilla, in the meanwhile, kept staring. In silence, because that's how massages usually went at the Convalescence Garden -as far as her personal experience went, at least- but she was starting to think that maybe striking up a conversation of some sort would've been for the better. Snowsant's reactions were also leaving her a little confused, although that feeling was slowly turning into something a fair bit more puzzling and also remarkably more... endearing, if she could be allowed the word to describe it.

Snowsant, on her part, was kind of shaking. No, that wasn't quite the right word, Vanilla corrected herself. She could spot a drop of sweat or two here and there on her back, which was odd, but even more puzzling was the way the liberi's hips were trembling, even if it was such a minor motion Vanilla wouldn't have noticed it at all had she not been paying attention to that area avoid applying too much pressure with the massager. To add to that, Snowsant had started to well and truly bury her face in the pillow, resurfacing every now and then to breathe in before sinking her face down again. There was a sort of rhythm to it though, so maybe that was just some sort of weird, personal routine of hers? Vanilla's gaze kept wandering over her friend's body and eventually landed on her feet, clad in a pair of simple socks. They were standing upright and swinging softly left and right on their toes, in a surprisingly cute manner at that.

Something masquerading as curiosity creeping up within her mind, Vanilla silently swallowed a small lump of saliva and tried pushing the massager directly against the base of Snowsant's tail feathers rather than holding it on the skin surrounding them.

Snowsant then let out a startled moan, which caused Vanilla to pull the massager away out of reflex.

The silence which followed, broken only by the weak buzzing of the tool, felt awkward enough to make Snowsant wish those sheets would just open up and swallow her whole, never letting her back out ever again. Vanilla, on the other hand, was a fair bit embarrassed if the state of her cheeks and the motions of her tail were of any indication, but more than that she was puzzled and, perhaps, also a little intrigued.

"I, uhm... should I... continue... ?"

Without turning around, just reaching for Vanilla's wrist instead, Snowsant said something. But her face was buried so deep into the pillow she might just leave a permanent print of her visage on it.

"I didn't get a single word, sorry"

The growing awkwardness of the following silence quickly pushed Snowsant away from the soothing reprieve of the pillow.

"I'm sorry, that was... terrible of me, I shouldn't have... "

"Wait, I think that's normal!" Vanilla shouted immediately, having sort of misunderstood Snowsant's point "Perfumer once told me that some people just get excited when receiving a massage! I... think that's what she said? Kind of. Anyway, I'm sure this was my fault, I'll just avoid that area! Actually, is there anywhere else I shouldn't put the massager on? I don't know much about biology so I have no clue whether you have any nerve clusters I should stay away from which I miss... and your voice sounded really sweet there anyway, so you really shouldn't have to worry. I promise it, I don't mind"

Vanilla probably didn't realize it herself, but that last part of her reply had just fried Snowsant's ability to clearly think things through. Temporarily, granted, but that state lasted long enough to make her blurt out something she almost but not quite regretted saying just seventeen seconds later.

"A-actually, if that's the case then... the same spot would be... fine... " she replied, and while Vanilla couldn't see her face she still noticed the brief but intense quivering of her feathers.

Vanilla almost asked whether she had heard her right, because Snowsant had kind of given her the impression she wasn't terribly comfortable with the way the situation had developed, but at the same time she feared the liberi might take back her words when inquired about them just to avoid bothering Vanilla herself, which was something she'd rather avoid.

"Sure" she decided to answer, although the spring in her voice was just a little bit manufactured this time.

And so, with a mixture of curiosity, hesitation, confusion and, to be completely honest, a tiny little bit of excitement too, Vanilla placed the massager down against the base of Snowsant's tail feathers again, right where they joined her flesh.

For a brief moment, Snowsant's entire body shivered. Vanilla noticed her feet in particular growing tense, her feathers quivering visibly before settling down. The soft vibrations reverberated through her muscles, bringing a soothing sense or relax slowly followed by a warm, decidedly less calming tingle. Clenching her fists and biting her lips to avoid doing or saying anything weird, Snowsant simply tried to stay still and focus, albeit she couldn't even decide what exactly she should've focused on to begin with. Vanilla, on her part, was sort of captivated by the liberi's feet, by the way they kept swaying left and right on their toes like some sort of cute, upside-down pair of pendulums. But she still made a point to bring her gaze back to Snowsant's lower back as often as possible, to visually confirm that the massager was still where it was supposed to. And precisely because of that she noticed that Snowsant had started to move her hips a little bit.

Vanilla swallowed a small lump of saliva and told herself that maybe she was just giving that body language the wrong interpretation. Sure, the way Snowsant's hips were softly swaying left and right was... provocative, even if somehow innocent at the same time, but she just couldn't really picture the liberi purposefully sending that sort of message in such a way.

And, to be fair, she was right. Snowsant was actually sending precisely that sort of message, yes, it just wasn't at all a conscious act from her part. The warm tingle spreading in her lower regions, combined with the state of relax her muscles were being gently lulled into, was making her roll around a bit in place, which effectively gave off the impression of her hips swaying left and right, causing her tail feathers to flutter ever so slightly. The vibrations reached deep enough to stimulate her, deep redness taking over her cheeks as she put her every effort into keeping her breath straight and regular, her fists clenching nearly to the point of hurting as she tried to not give off any weird signal, unaware of the fact she was doing that already anyway, a small stain slowly spreading on her underwear.

Guided by something which could not too loosely be described as curious lust, Vanilla pushed the massager down with a little bit more strength, sending the vibrations deeper into Snowsant's body and dragging a muffled moan out of her. She immediately opened her mouth to apologize, but the words died in her mouth upon noticing that the liberi was pushing her hips up against the massager a bit, and sort of... grinding the base of her tail against it, it would seem.

A not too small part of her mind marveling at the difference in physiology between them -that sort of stimulation would've been simply relaxing for Vanilla-, the vouivre tried to match Snowsant's motions with her hand, silently asking herself what she was and wasn't allowed to do with the other one in the meanwhile and ultimately sandwiching it between her thighs to make sure she wouldn't do anything inappropriate with it, even though she wasn't really sure what would be inappropriate and what wouldn't anymore given the weird turn the situation had taken.

Snowsant, in the meanwhile, had stopped biting her lips out of fear she might accidentally puncture them and leave blood stains on Vanilla's sheets, resorting to just rubbing her lips together instead. Which was decidedly less effective, but since the stimulation wasn't all that intense at the end of the day she still managed to remain quiet, the pillow muffling out her increasingly ragged breathing. She could feel heat slowly building up between her legs, a damp feeling spreading in her nethers as the massager kept teasing her lower back, causing the muscles in its immediate vicinity to relax while simultaneously making those a bit further away slowly grow tense, the pleasure increasing bit by bit as Vanilla kept moving the buzzing head around Snowsant's tail feathers, the way the liberi had started rubbing her thighs together sending the vouivre's thoughts into a frenzy, her tail winding up on itself, stretching out and then coiling back again over and over without her quite realizing, the tension she was feeling being of an entirely different kind compared to the one she had learned to deal with while out on an active battlefield.

Then Snowsant's voice managed to slip past both her lips and the pillow, a soft, alluring, not entirely muffled, perhaps even a little bit sultry moan escaping her and reaching all the way to Vanilla's ears, echoing within them like a thunder in the sky. The vouivre's thoughts getting more and more scrambled, she followed Snowsant's hips with the massager as they dropped down without even realizing it, preventing the liberi from escaping the vibrations and causing her soft, tender orgasm to last that little bit longer, to linger that little bit more, and to feel that little bit more embarrassing if we want to be completely honest, Snowsant coming to the conclusion that the most polite thing to do at the moment was grabbing the pillow and chocking herself out with it to escape... pretty much everything.

"Ehm... you ok, Snowsant?" Vanilla inquired, poking her a bit on the shoulder as she turned the massager off and placed it down "Did you ha... w-was that relaxing?" she asked, not certain about what the best way to phrase the question was.

Snowsant found herself trying to pick a direction in the raging storm of her thoughts and follow it, torn between the idea of pretending to have passed out, that of getting up and apologizing as profusely as she could and that of -no, that last one she couldn't even bear to entertain as an idea. She hadn't really picked a course of action yet when she pushed herself off the pillow, getting on her knees and turning around to meet Vanilla's gaze, but she didn't want to just lie there without answering her. Although that did effectively rule out the first option, at least.

She hadn't expected to see Vanilla's face flushed, even though the redness of her cheeks really couldn't be compared to that of Snowsant's. Still, the sight made her heart flutter a bit more.

"... I'm terribly sorry, that was terrible of me, I shouldn't... "

"No no no, wait, I'm, I mean, that was, uh, I don't know what that was" Vanilla tried to cheer her up, keeping to herself the doubt about whether Snowsant's behavior was normal for someone coming from the big cities or not "But if you enjoyed it then it's fine! I'm the one who offered, after all!"

"... Vanilla!" the liberi then shouted as she grabbed her by the shoulders, the sudden increase in the tone of her voice and the unexpected physical contact nearly making Vanilla stand at attention "I know that today was a mess, but... n-next month, on my birthday, would you... w-would you like to... be... my... my first?!" she sort of asked, sort of shouted, sort of something else yet, her gaze rapidly moving between Vanilla's eyes and the sheets underneath them.

It took Vanilla a couple of seconds to process that, and the expression on her face was not one Snowsant had expected to see in the slightest admittedly, but her touch as she grabbed Snowsant's hands in turn felt quite welcoming in a way.

"Snowsant. I... I had no idea nobody had ever thrown a birthday party for you. I swear I won't mess it up, it's gonna be perfect! You have my promise!" she declared, a mix of pride and compassion in her words, confusion then showing up on her face as well as Snowsant's face turned even redder for some reason.

"Th-that's not what I mea-f-forget about it!" she shouted as she got up, nearly tripping over herself as she put her shoes back on, too embarrassed to clear up the misunderstanding.

"Wait, what?! What were you talking about then? Wait, Snowsant! Wait!" she tried to stop her, but the liberi dashed out of the room with a startling display of agility and speed, her apology echoing in the hallways as she sprinted away.

"... hold on" Vanilla said to no one, left alone -... well, not quite, her pets were all still there and staring at her through the bars of the cage, but still- to ponder Snowsant's request, her tail slowly coiling on itself yet again without stretching back out as her cheeks grew flushed "Did she actually mean... no way, right... I mean, I'd... ?"

In an attempt at putting her thoughts in order, Vanilla decided to start by cleaning up her room. There was a small, wet stain on her sheets, but she could deal with that later. Snowsant's stuff... it was probably better to leave it as neatly ordered as she could in a corner of the room, she would definitively come pick it up the following day. As for the massager, she decided to put it back away for the time being, the battery still had plenty of charge left after all. And, as she stored it in the drawer, her gaze fell on the two other items placed within. She could kind of understand what the purpose of the blindfold was, but she still had no clue why Franka had given her that pair of fur-lined handcuffs together with the massager.

It was probably better to ask her before Snowsant's actual birthday, she figured.

---

Thank you for reading.