Ryn of Avonside

From the Perspective of Rynadria

The storm outside hammered at Stormpine like a monster trying to get in and eat everyone. Down in the glass balcony, it was relatively sheltered by the huge boughs of the tree, but we were up in the greenhouses.

Rain hammered at the tough organic crystal windows, coming down in sheets that were strangely comforting. Now that we had a tree with actual windows, doors that could bolt closed, and heating, we all felt warm and cosy.

The massive domed shield produced by the Stormpine helped a lot too, redirecting about half of the magical energy down directly into my reservoir. Unfortunately, the lower caldera and Vurburch didn't have the protection of the shield. We planned to have the buildings down there be sturdy, so I was hopeful, but this storm would be the real test.

“My flower is still there,” Grace said, tugging on my hand to pull me over.

Almost flat against the ground, the wide petals of the yellow, green, and blue flower still held the crisp appearance of a living plant.

Kneeling down, I ran a hand over the surface of one petal. It was dry and waxy, but with an exquisite softness that made me want to rub my cheek against it. Looking up at my girlfriend, I switched on mage-sight and glanced between them. There was an odd resonance in their auras that matched up.

“I think you're still linked to the flower,” I said, concerned. Did I have a piece of Ollinfer's magic living in my grove?

“It feels like it,” she said, and abruptly, she stepped forward onto the flower. I thought her boots might hurt it, but it was tougher than it looked.

Sitting down cross-legged, she smiled up at me. “The plant that allowed me to date you.”

My whole body relaxed reflexively under the warmth of that smile. “You look happy.”

“I am, kinda,” she said, patting the flower next to her. “I mean, there's some stressful stuff going on. I'm dealing, though, and life is exciting.”

I followed and settled into a similar position beside her. She put an arm around me, and I sighed deeply at the touch of human warmth. When I leaned in, she was closer than I expected and her face bumped into the side of my head. We laughed, but she settled there rather than pulling back.

Her lips were less than an inch from my ear, so all she had to do was murmur when she said, “I love you. You're incredible. You're everything.”

“Grace,” I sighed, leaning closer against her.

We sat like that for five or so minutes, just enjoying one another's touch and company.

Then, Grace chuckled in my ear. “God, Ollinfer was hot. I'm glad we caught each other staring, or I would've felt really guilty.”

I turned a little so I could see her face. “Grace, come on. Looking is fine, so long as you like, don't leer or whatever.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Staring for long enough that you make the other person uncomfortable, I guess?” I shrugged, watching while she struggles to process ephemeral social rules. “Think of it like this — you don't know how comfortable a stranger is with being admired, so you be cautious — one or two seconds. The more you know someone, the better your understanding of their boundaries, so you can adjust it to that.”

“I've never struggled with being social when I need to, but I've never understood the rules,” she said with a laugh at her own expense.

She was only passingly interested, obviously, but it was actually a subject I liked to think on. Grace was going to receive those thoughts now whether she liked it or not. “So, the way I see it, most of the social rules have their basis in the fact that you don't know where other people's boundaries are. You could ask, of course, but that's also usually treading into very personal territory. So yeah, we're just cautious with strangers while our brains consciously and subconsciously churn through every interaction with them, trying to gauge where their boundaries are.”

“So how does that apply to us ogling Ollinfer?” Grace asked.

“I mean, a literal eight foot tall goddess rocks up completely naked, I think it's safe to say you can stare a little. Hell, knowing how she rolls, she'd probably have said yes if you started coming on to her,” I laughed.

Grace's eyebrow rose, and she leaned forward a little. “Ryn…”

I blinked. “What?”

Grace continued to give me that inquiring, probing stare, then frowned. “I don't think I’d be interested, despite how hot she is. Gods are scary. But… you said that like you'd be okay with it.”

That pulled me up short. Huh, I guess I did, huh? Earlier when Grace and Eilian were glaring at each other, I'd also been casually okay with joking in my head about them fucking. My girlfriend, having sex with someone else.

Now that I was examining it, I felt a protective, jealous surge in my stomach like warm milk curdling. Then, it got worse because I'd just sort of claimed ownership of her in my head, and that didn't feel right either.

“I think…” I began, then grimaced and pulled back slightly to run a hand through my long magenta hair. Of course, my fingers got caught on a knot, and I winced at the slight twinge of pain.

Grace tutted and reached out, taking my hand and pulling it free. She then began to detangle the knot, shaking her head slightly as she did so. The angle caused her to give up, so she gestured for me to spin around. “Sit in my lap. If you're looking away you might have an easier time explaining what's going on inside that pretty head of yours, and I can work on fixing your hair.”

Smiling, I did as she told me to. With my back to her, it was indeed easier to think. Her hands began to untangle my hair in earnest, while I tried to do the same with my feelings. “So… like, we both know I can be kinda horny, right?”

She laughed and a hand strayed down to briefly palm my boob. “Yes, I know.”

Like a switch had been flipped, I felt myself move from theoretically horny to very much practically horny. “Yeah… exactly. So like, I think you being fucked by a huge goddess is very hot, but then a part of me is like, but she's mine, and then I feel bad for claiming ownership of you.”

“I am yours, though,” she said, her fingers going still. “You're mine and I'm yours. I like it like that — it's a nice, solid connection or whatever. I don't know… it's hard to put it into words. I'm not bothered by it, though.”

I was quiet for a few seconds as I mulled that over. It was frustrating. I felt like I could always get a pretty good read on others around me, but with myself, I was stumped.

“Oh, I thought of an analogy!” Grace said suddenly. “Okay, so… padlocks. They're a tool to like, claim something, right? To stop others from getting to your thing. But, if you padlock two padlocks together, they're both attached, but either one can break the connection.”

I couldn't help but laugh with affection at how proud she sounded over her analogy. She was so gosh damn cute.

“Okay, that… makes sense,” I agreed slowly.

Of course, that's when my stupid brain started mocking me for how pretentious we sounded. Blah blah blah, philosophical bullshit spoken by two people who don't actually know shit. At least Grace was upfront about how she wasn't an authority on this subject.

“Your shoulders just tensed,” she murmured. “You're not hating on yourself, are you?”

“No, no… I mean yeah, but I just…”

My hair was swiped to the side, and goosebumps rippled out over my body as she kissed the back of my neck. “Ryn. How about this? I love you, and you love me, and we agree that it won't change.”

“Okay,” I said, heavily distracted by the way her breath felt on my neck.

Despite that, however, I was still conflicted. “Can I ask first… why are we having this conversation? I've only had like, a few passing what-if thoughts about Kelsey and Melody, plus that one time that Melody and I got a bit real with the friendly flirting.”

“That’s exactly the reason. We're having this conversation because it's been coming up a lot,” she said, and I felt her shrug behind me. “I figured we should actually hash it out in case one of us does something bad.”

“But I’m not going to do anything bad, and I know you aren’t either…” I said, feeling confused and a little scared now.

Grace pulled her hands away. “Yeah, but… I just… it’s important to have this conversation anyway, right?”

Turning away from her had helped me order my thoughts, but now I needed to see her. Struggling with limbs, knees, and all the other awkward aspects of sitting down, I shifted until I was facing her again, with my calves straddling her hips. “Grace…”

She narrowed her eyes slightly. “What?”

I really did not like this. She was being weirdly cagey, and it was beginning to scare me.

She must've seen something in my expression, because she sagged a little. “Okay, fine… I’ll tell you my thought process and how it started, but I don't want you to think I'm angling to get with her… but do you remember my friend Sandy? She's with the maintenance crews.”

“Yeah…”

“She just recently got a girlfriend after finally figuring out that she's bi,” Grace explained while she tugged nervously at her thumb with her other hand. “She had a boyfriend, and now she has both. When I mentioned offhandedly, like as a joke, that there was flirting with Melody and Kelsey, she started kinda preaching to me. She talked about how good it is, being poly, and she said some stuff that made me kinda… think…”

My heart was beginning to hammer in my chest. “Like… what? Think how?”

The crazy thing was that I wasn’t scared that she was trying to break up with me or even that she was going to tell me that I needed to do something differently. There was something else, something in my head, I didn’t know…

“Well, it was basically like, that she thinks that not being poly is a character flaw, basically — that if you're not willing to share, then you're not as…” She trailed off, shrugging helplessly.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. “She sounds like such an incredible, enlightened being.”

Grace frowned and continued to play with her thumb, but the tip grew purple as she gripped it too hard. “Don't be like that. I'm just… it made me think, okay? Then you joked about me getting with Ollinfer, and… you know.”

Seeing how my serrated sarcasm wasn't appreciated, I took a deep breath. “Okay. I'm sorry. I love you, Grace. Still, I don't agree with her. I'm not some great philosopher, but I do know that it is definitely not my place to question the morality of a happy relationship between two or more other people.”

Grace nodded slowly, but she didn't entirely relax like I'd hoped. “Okay. That's fair, and I think I agree with you. Still, I'd really like it if you just let me say this, okay?”

I was getting extremely overwhelmed now, I could tell, but the source of my turmoil was difficult to pinpoint. Despite the fact that she was bringing this subject up, she also felt like the rock that was steadying my thoughts. We loved each other, we’d been through a ton of shit together, and I could trust that, but…

“I need you to stop,” I whispered, looking up at her. “Please? Just let me… sit for a second?”

I watched as she swallowed what looked like a whole avocado pit, and then her eyes widened and she bashed her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Ryn, why do we always forget that we can—” she transformed into her soft-barked tree hafornsu. “—Do this?”

A thread of relief wormed through my thoughts, and I transformed too, desperately seeking that emotional connection. When those floral empathic pathways linked together, though, I was met with a storm that matched the one outside, and the one within me.

“Holy shit,” Grace muttered, and at the same time that I did, she pulled away.

We stared at one another, and I’d never used the word before, but it fit how I felt perfectly — flabbergasted. We had a lot of emotions going on.

Tentatively, we rejoined again, and laughed when we saw the storms fade into amusement and affection.

“We are so confused,” she said, nuzzling her forehead against mine.

I giggled and wrapped my arms tighter around her, feeling for her bark skin at the base of her neck. Love was quickly replacing the storm of confusion inside her, and I imagined the same was true for me. I felt very secure with her, very safe.@@novelbin@@

“Okay, you love me,” she murmured.

“And you love me,” I replied, just as softly.

I felt trepidation bloom in her when she pulled me in tight. “Okay, so now that our stupid brains are calm, should we try talking again?”

Turmoil instantly gripped me, but I fought against it, clinging to the feelings of love I was receiving from Grace. Of course, her feeling the effects that her suggestion had on me caused those loving emotions to swirl into alarm and regret.

Seeing that in her sobered me and helped to settle my emotions again, and we ended up with us both sitting in a weird mix of trust in each other and confusion at our own emotional reactions.

“This is fucked,” she sighed. “Maybe we should let this go.”

“No, no, I think…” I began, and then blanked and had to push through to the words that had immediately escaped into the aether. “I think that we should say some things and see how we react. First off, let’s imagine you getting with… I don’t know, someone hot.”

I started, but I felt a goofy, mischievous emotion bubble over from her, and she said, “Someone hot, other than you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Haha, very funny. You know what I meant.”

Her lips came down and she kissed me briefly, before returning to the foreheads touching position. “Okay. I’m thinking of hooking up with someone hot who isn’t you.”

Carefully, I inspected the emotional transmissions I was getting from her. Raw lust was first, but then a confused and reactionary guilt slammed through it, followed by a desperate attempt to reassure and stabilise. Okay. That was… interesting.

“You feel like it would be fun, which is normal, but then you feel super guilty, and then you felt… I can’t really interpret the last one. I think the last one had articulated thoughts that I didn’t get,” I said, opening my eyes to look at her. I got a blurry mess because she was so close, but it was still a very gorgeous blurry mess.

“Yeah. I felt guilty because even though you’re here telling me to think it, I still felt like, you know, I was betraying you. The last part was just me being like, oh she’s right here, it’s okay, or something,” she explained with a bashful shrug. “God, this is really raw.”

I brushed a thumb down the back of her neck, comforting her. “Yeah. Want to see how I feel when I think of the same thing?”

She shuddered a little, and apprehension curled through her like smoke for a second. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

Without waiting for any sort of centering to happen, I plunged into an image of Grace getting with someone else. I imagined her pleasuring this person, and the same in reverse, and as with before when we weren’t sharing emotions, a storm whipped at my insides. I backed out of it quickly, deeply confused by my reaction and hoping that Grace understood it better than me.

“Well?” I prompted her.

She cleared her throat, then cleared it again. Through our link, I felt a sort of introspective concentration. “You got turned on by it. You were kinda turned on by it the whole way through— yup, you’re imagining it again without any other feelings and you’re definitely turned on by it. You also felt left out — FOMO, I guess? You still trusted me and stuff, but I think… yeah, you wanted to be involved, I guess. Can you think of the same thing, but with both of us and this imaginary person?”

Even as she suggested it, the image popped into my head and the FOMO she described was gone. Horniness was all over the place though, oh my goodness. Images of us working together on this faceless person, then of the same with Grace as the focus— whoa.

Grace laughed and her lips pressed in against mine again. The kiss gained a bit of passion, then a lot as the feelings rebounded and resonated between us. In the space of two seconds, it escalated and we teetered on the precipice of forgetting the conversation and going further.

Resolve hardened in my girlfriend, though, and she pulled away. “Okay, so I guess if that situation happens, we’re fine. That’s one hypothetical figured out.”

I squeezed her for a second, then with a grimace, I moved us forward. “Now we need to see how you feel about me… doing things with others.”

Grace shifted slightly, and I felt anxiety rise inside her like a tide, replacing the recent joviality. “Okay. Um… you think about it first, I guess?”

Doing my best to ignore what she was feeling, I began to picture myself with another girl. To my surprise, the emotions were fairly straightforward. A little bit of lust was there, obviously, but it sort of felt… flat. It was strange.

“Huh,” Grace murmured. “Do it again? I’m struggling to figure it out.”

I did so, and afterwards, she pulled back to look me in the eyes. “Ryn, I think you might not be interested in it. Like, that felt more like you were trying to feel horny rather than actually being horny.”

I stared back at her, confused and preparing to dispute what she was saying, but when I retried the little experiment again, it was just as she said. It was pretty meh.

Grace wiggled a bit and leaned in again, reestablishing the connection. To my surprise, she was almost excited. “Okay, we’re going to do two back to back. Think of getting with me, then think of getting with Melody or Kelsey, your choice.”

“What?” I squeaked, my eyes going wide.

Even this close, I could see the corners of her green eyes scrunch up into a grin. Her tone and her emotions were encouraging. “Go on…”

So, that’s what I did. First, I thought of kissing my lovely girlfriend — of all the various snapshots of memory I had where we were making love, and the obvious tidal-wave of affection and arousal hit me. I was very into her.

She wiggled and chuckled when she felt it, and we snuggled closer instinctively. “That was me, I’ve definitely felt that before. Now do with one of our friends. Don’t feel bad for thinking of them, either. It’s fiction. I just want to test something.”

I was very suspicious of her now, but I did as she requested. Because Kelsey was the one who I’d most recently connected with — it was her blonde hair I had in my fingers, and her lips on me. Horny feelings bubbled up from below, and butterflies followed. No love, though, just connection and attraction.

“Thought that might happen,” Grace said. “You’re not into fucking a random stranger, but a friend who you already like — you’re into that.”

“Okay, but that’s just—” I started to say, but Grace kissed me to shut me up.

Smug warmth came over the connection when she said, “You need an emotional connection to get properly into the mood, my love. You’re aesthetically attracted to girls, but getting further than that — moving out of uh… like, the ‘oh, she’s hot’, stage, and into, ‘yeah, let’s actually bang’, stage is different.”

Phew, I felt a little uncomfortable with how hard she’d just pinned me with that little description. It rang way too true within me.

“Okay, well…” I said, grasping at some sort of response. “Fine. That seems… accurate. What about you, though? How do you feel about me getting with someone else?”

She took a long breath. “Let me show you.”

Grace’s emotional response was enlightening. She thought it was hot, but there was a strong undercurrent of fear. It was a very easily identifiable fear, though, even if it was muted by the analytical way we were approaching this.

“Grace, you’re incredible, I keep telling you that,” I said, leaving the connection to spike her in the eyes with a forceful glare. “That was a huge lack of self confidence. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re worried that I’ll be more interested in someone else.”

“I know,” she said, eyes turning sorrowful.

“So we can potentially do something fun when both of us are involved, but based on this, I think it’s best if we keep it at that,” I said, raising an eyebrow to ask if she agreed.

She shook her head. “No, you should be able to explore… Look. I was talking to Lily from the Queer club, and she said that one of the things she regrets is that she’ll never get to experience a high school romance as her true self. She seemed to care about it a lot — or mourn it, really. Which like, honestly it sucked when I did it and it’s probably the reason for that lack of self confidence you felt. But, like, it was still fun, some of it. I want you to be able to experience some of that, or at least a college level version of it, you know?”

I shook my head while a soft, loving feeling warmed my insides. “That’s really thoughtful of you, Grace, but we both saw the truth. Neither of us is ready to tackle a situation where the other might not be involved. So no, we’re putting a hard line there.”

She looked like she wanted to argue further, but then she sort of sagged and nodded. “Okay. That’s fair.”

Ugh, the look on her face was so… it was a lot of things.

“Come here,” I whispered, brushing her cheek with my thumb. “Let me show you how much I love you in particular.”