“Well… uh… take that grass! You water-wasting lie of societal convention! You’re a scam and a burden on Earth and society!” Doodle clapped trying to keep a positive spin, “You’re capable of a great deal it seems, Ms. Collector of cold. Makes me wonder what else you can do with a lil’ ingenuity.”
Shida took a few deep breaths to recover from the shock of that event and recenter herself, while also moving away from the destroyed ground a bit. She would probably have a hard time explaining that to Dagon in the near future.
“Well, I guess a first good idea would be to try and find a way to safely dispose of something like that…” she said with a nervous chuckle as she looked at the spread of destruction that she had left behind. And also, she was very aware that she didn’t even get all the ‘cold’ from her surroundings. She had just collected so much until it felt right, and didn’t keep going until she couldn’t anymore.
Now that she wasn’t performing magic for a second, she tried to explain it to herself in a more realistic manner.
She had taken out ‘cold’ and left ‘warm’...well, maybe she had done the opposite. Heat was just energy. And everything was technically ‘warm’ all the time. After all, even temperatures below freezing were still more than two hundred degrees above an actual absence of heat. Meaning making even a small amount of matter actually absent of heat could probably provide enough energy to warm up her surroundings quite a bit, right? To melt the snow around here she would just need to increase the surrounding temperature by what? 20 degrees maybe? That meant she could heat an area ten times larger up to that level…probably. Maybe she was still thinking too rationally about this. But it still gave her the thought that trying to collect heat instead of cold might be a very bad idea, considering how much more of it there was to go around, and how devastating leaving only ‘cold’ in its place appeared to be based on this small scale example.
Sticking to handling cold in a controlled area was probably the better call.
“So…let’s try that,” she finished her earlier thought aloud and closed her eyes in order to repeat the experiment, hopefully without destroying anything this time. Maybe Doodle, who could actually see what was going on, would have some sort of idea. Or maybe she could just…willingly disperse it again…or something.
“Maybe disperse it up into the sky?” Doodle suggested before another idea came to his mind, “Hold on boss. The fae dwell in the unseen, I can maybe impart something to you… make our sights one. Kinda like what nature spirits can do with wildlife when they’re doing whatever spirits do. But you have to be willing because, well to be honest there is no way I’m powerful enough to do it otherwise. Can’t keep it up forever for obvious reasons… that being my body would be blind and trying to control it through other’s eyes is difficult, if not amusing. But maybe it will help you visualize it for the future?”
“Well, cold usually falls, Doodle,” Shida sighed, before thinking about the suggestion. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about allowing anything magical that actually needed her permission to be done to her. But then again, maybe she should actually see what she was doing just so she wouldn’t accidentally drop another ball of death onto her feet without realizing. “Urgh…fine. Let’s try that as well.”
“Okay, wow, I wasn’t expecting a yes. Alright. Uhhh, okay.” Doodle adjusted himself on his snow mound and shut his eyes, “I need you to close those peepers for a moment, and if you can manage it… don’t push me out too harshly when you're done. Just so you know, this isn’t a possession or a delve into your head. I’m just hitchhiking with your sight, bonus is you’ll see how I do. You can swipe me off at any time, with ease. Alright? Alright.” The elf’s face then slightly contorted as his shut lids absorbed into his face, leaving no impression of eyes ever being present.
As Shida closed her eyes she could almost immediately feel a presence, like a ghost layered on top of a living person. However it only lined up perfectly where her eyes sat.
“Okay. Open.” Doodle said from his body.
The feline’s usual white and yellow eyes opened, now black with glittering stars. The world around her… it was almost too much to process… Darkness didn’t matter as colors had such a vibrant depth and separate identity from casted shadows. Details no matter how small are seen and perceived once the gaze fell upon them. Snow was not a white powder, it’s a collection of small crystals partially fusing and melting from each other with each mirror shift of temperature. The breeze and moving air around had a perceivable form like free flowing liquids. If she were to look at her own hands, Shida would see every hair, wrinkle and marking. She would also see an aura around her, not only her body heat but that was seen as well. No, she saw what must have been an essence of the magic within her, as that’s what it registered as in her mind.
“Yep, Doodle-vison.” the elf said, waving a hand to show that his consciousness still rested in his body, though he struggled a bit to turn the right direction to face the feline. Unlike her form that radiated an essence, she saw that was all Doodle seemed to be. Distinctly something not alive in the same sense as she was, as he was made up of something immaterial made material,
“Try your magic now, boss!” he encourages with a thumbs up.
Seeing Doodle’s form, an idea came to Shida that both scared and allured her, but she didn’t act on it just yet, deciding to instead store it away in the far reaches of her mind for the time being.
Instead, she followed his suggestion and once again closed her eyes, imagining the things around her maybe a bit more vividly now that she had seen what she was actually interacting with here.
Lifting her hand, she once again focussed on bringing all the cold in the environment together. Although, when she briefly peeked one eye open to look at what was happening, she could see that her rational idea was actually a lot closer to reality. Cold wasn’t really coming towards her hand, it was more that she was dispersing any heat above it into the environment, leaving a nearly completely motionless and almost empty sphere behind to hover above her palm. It was fascinating that she could intend to do one thing, but in reality do something entirely different that had the same effect regardless, but it was also scary. This magic definitely followed her intentions, not her command. Meaning that it had room for interpretation, which…wasn’t good.
After she had been going at it for a while, she once again stopped herself in her ‘gathering’ before whatever she created here reached a level that she could not properly control.
Now fully opening her eyes, she once again saw all the warm air around her, that immediately began to intermix with all the colder air that surrounded it and hadn’t been affected by her as soon as she no longer concentrated on anything. Meanwhile the sphere of pure ‘cold’ remained as it was, motionlessly hovering above her hand.
“Great…what now…” she thought aloud, wondering about a way to safely dispose of her experiments before she would even think about conducting any more dangerous ones.
“Just don’t ‘let it go’.” Doodle replied in thought, “Usually I’d bring heat back into it to nullify it… If you are unable to do that… leak the cold free slowly? Uhm… absorb it to then direct it somewhere in particular maybe? Ahh… I’d say we’re playing with fire here but… yeah… I’m not sure, boss.”
Shida tried to concentrate a bit, thinking of letting the cold leak back out or moving it somehow or doing anything with it but letting it drop. However…nothing happened. The only way she could move it was by literally physically moving it around with her hand. For a moment, she thought about throwing it, before remembering that it would eventually hit the ground and they’d be back at square zero.
“I uhhhh….I’m not holding onto it. It…it’s just like that now…I guess. At least it's not leaking on its own. Uhhh,” she explained and thought a bit about the implications. Well…the great collectors had been exactly that…collectors. They weren’t exactly known for spreading stuff back out. Shida wasn’t even sure if they could have done that. Probably, sure, they were creator deities and could ultimately do most anything that myiat ascribed to them, however the idea of them giving anything back or spreading it out after it was collected was never discussed…ever. That left basically only one option. “Introduce heat back into it, you say. Okay, I guess I can tr- Whoa, Mama!”
True to her word, Shida had tried to also collect heat to combine it with the cold once again to bring it back to its natural, impure state.
However, since she wanted to get it right, she had prepared to try quite hard and yet…it was easy. Too easy, in fact. Way too easy. She had prepared to expend a similar effort into gathering ‘hot’ as she had used to gather the ‘cold’, and apparently, she had started out with the much harder exercise, because she barely even pulled on the waves of heat around her before it began rushing into her hands almost by itself, immediately overpowering the essence of frost hovering above her hand and rushing in and in and in until the bit of matter trapped within it began to glow brighter and brighter, forming what could only be described as a brightly burning miniature sun, that was created so quickly that she barely even had time to stop herself from going much, much further.
She finally ceased her efforts and once again stood there and just stared. She was holding the hovering ball of fire and was now even more unsure what to do with it.
“Uhhhhhhhh….” she uttered in distress and subconsciously stretched her arm out to keep the thing as far away from herself as she could, as it easily overpowered the earlier sphere of cold by orders of magnitude of intensity. “Uuuuuuuuuuuh….”
“Ooooh boy… Oh boy… It’s like watching a toddler pick up a bigger loaded handgun…” Doodle uttered quickly in thought, “Okay, don’t panic boss… I uhhh…heat rises yeah? Try projecting it up and I’ll help it along with an updraft… Let the winter air take care of it.” he said without all that much confidence as he started to move his arms to summon said wind.
“Nonono, I got this,” Shida assured him and took a bit of a more confident stance once she had gotten over the first shock and also remembered that heat apparently hurt her just as little as cold did. “I got this. Alright. Okay. Controlling cold is much easier.”
Breathing deeply a few times, she calmed her racing heart and concentrated once again on bringing back the cold. And since it took a lot more effort out of her to disperse this energy again than it did to gather it, at least after a bit of a hasty upstart where a large part of it seemingly just wanted to escape and thus sped up the process quite a bit, she managed to almost neutralize the sphere again over the period of almost a minute, leaving behind only a bit of gently heat-warped air that she felt confident in just letting disperse on its own as she pulled her hand away again.
“Okay, supplementing heat might work, but darn is it scary…” she ultimately commented while taking a few more relaxing breaths.
“Jingle my bells…” Doodle sighed before his body slipped off the back of the mound, the shared vision almost shook away but maintained “Ouch. Lovin’ the progress, boss. I know breaking eggs is necessary to make an omelet… but I’d settle for hash browns instead… maybe a cup of fruit too… Anything else you wanna try while Doodle-vision is up?”
Shida didn’t reply. However, she did lift her hand again and focussed very briefly on something. Without knowing that it was there, it would be almost impossible to notice, however as she saw even the briefest movement confirming her suspicion, she immediately ceased her concentration and dropped her hand again.
“No, I think I know what’s up now. Seeing it was a lot less useful than I imagined,” she waved off and closed her eyes again to allow the elf to withdraw of his own accord. “But still…thank you.”
In a blink of impulse Shida’s vision returned to normal.
“Sure thing… Perspective always helps, or at least doesn’t harm,” the elf said before rolling backwards and into a standing position. The lids of his eyes peeled apart back into existence and he rapidly blinked as his sight was fully restored to him, “But hey, heat powers to boot! Don’t let Mother Nature catch wind of this, she might get jealous and throw a tornado or something at us…” he jested before stretching his limber arms upward over his head, “Also appreciate not being tossed out. A vomiting elf is not as majestic as it may sound.” He shrugged before turning back towards the door to the house.
“Right. I’ll just try to get a bit more of a handle on things, since I know I can reverse it now,” Shida said with a wave. “Call me back in when…I don’t know, when I’m needed or something.”
Although it was true that she decided to practice the whole re-heating part a bit more now that she knew she could cool it back down if she messed up, she also wanted to try out something else, preferably without the elf’s eyes on her if she could. Therefore she watched him as he headed back inside and closed the door behind him.
With an exhale, she began to focus.
-
Chak breathed in as she pressed the clean soft towel into her face, picking up the lovely floral scent that must have been used in the washing process.
The hot shower indeed helped a great deal, especially with her lingering soreness from the past week. No wonder Simone does it so often.
Drying herself off she walked to the sink and mirror where she left her new change of clothes. Before dressing herself she wiped away the thick condensation from the mirror to check her head fur and brush it. However, she froze in place before a brush could be picked up. Immediately she noticed that the wall behind her reflection was a much darker color than it should have been. Normally she would have expected it to be a trick of the lighting first, but in this town she had come to expect it being the worst case. She stepped back from the small exposed reflection, only to have her back hit something.
Her heart thundered in fear, and although she didn’t have her Cali body at the moment… she couldn’t bring herself to move. A long-fingered hand with sharp claws gently rested on her shoulder. She could see the darkness shift in the mirror as the entity lowered its mouth to her ear.
-Kill… Shida…-
She blinked, and she was fully dressed and leaving the bathroom. She blinked again and she was in the kitchen where Zithra and Doodle were bickering over something.
“Hey, mind telling Shida her steak is done?” Zithra requested.
Chak blinked once more, feeling the familiar grip of her pulse pistol in her hand as she stepped outside.
“Stop…” she begged herself, but she continued on to soon see her friend standing amongst very disturbed snow and ground.
“Stop…” she ordered before her arm began to lift in Shida’s direction.
Her hand quaked as it struggled to stay on target.
Suddenly the world spun and in an instant all she could see was crunching whiteness.
Kicking the pistol away, Zithra pinned the Princess down as her body resisted.
“Hey-hey-hey!” he shouted as he started to kick at him and jostle in her weapon’s direction.
“Thank you…” she whispered while her body contradicted that sentiment.
To Zithra’s surprise, he could see in his periphery that Shida basically had not reacted to their fight at all, still standing turned away from them for a long time while staring at something glowing that was covered from his vision by her body.
Only after Chak’s thrashing had gotten a bit more violent did she seem to turn in their direction, although he noticed from experience that something about the movement was wrong. Usually, her ears would’ve turned way before her head as they caught the sound of their tussle before her vision could catch up, however right now, her eyes were seemingly the thing that had noticed them first.
As she fully turned around, she stared at the two in disbelief at first, and he could see her mouthing something that he interpreted as ‘Chak?’ although to him, not a single tone seemed to be escaping her lips.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Then, after a moment of her realizing what she was seeing, her face suddenly began to scrunch up in anger, and her mouth started to move a whole lot more - by the looks of it she was yelling or screaming something, presumably at him, but he strangely still couldn’t hear a thing. She turned fully towards them and gestured imperiously with her free hand, waving and pointing it in a way that could only mean ‘get off of her!’ while her other hand was busy holding a brightly glowing sphere of some kind, likely the thing she had heard Doodle and her talk about just earlier. As she stood she kept silently berating him, but despite all of her aggression that was blindingly obvious to him, for some reason, she didn’t act or come any closer, almost as if she was stuck behind some kind of wall, impatiently pacing like a predator in a cage just waiting to finally be let out to tear something to shreds.
“Something’s wrong!” Zithra shouted at Shida while at an absolute loss at how the world flipped to this insane situation, “She’s-” a boot made contact with his ear and temple, throwing him off.
“Nonononono!” Chak screamed softly as she saw herself crawling for her pistol.
Reaching it without Zithra’s interference she snatched it and staggered up, already directly pointing at Shida.
Meanwhile, the lying Manarian, only through his incredible hearing, started to make out the faintest hint of Shida’s ranting voice. Quieter than the lowest whisper and still sounding like it was muffled by multiple layers of insulating material, he could hear her tirade playing out, sounding more like a needle dragging along film than like a voice through all the muffling.
“-ip out every one of your accursed ear hairs and stuff ‘em down your throat you thankless-”
A pulse shot fired into the snow as Chak momentarily yanked her own hand down, but something about this influencing force was far mightier than Shida giving her an order. Just this one stalling effort caused her to nearly faint into unconsciousness while her body did as it was told. Something else was at the wheel, and it didn’t need her mind to comply.
“Chak?” Shida’s voice, still muffled to near imperceptibility, asked as she looked at the area that had been blasted away in confusion, before her eyes fell onto her friend without any understanding in them.
The shaking pistol lifted again, and Chak fought against it with everything she could muster in this state. It felt like her body was filled with wet compacted sand as she attempted the only thing she could think of to save her friend. Against it, she bent her elbow and dragged the weapon up near her own head, but in a violent push her arm corrected itself, tearing muscle and breaking bone as it did so.
While poorly suppressing a scream of pain, there wasn’t enough time to attempt something, anything else before it pulled the trigger right on its target.
The shot rang out and almost immediately its enormous force collided with something unseen, exploding into a huge unload of power as small bits of kinetic energy were seemingly scattered everywhere by the very air itself, the shot tearing itself apart as it met a seemingly unconquerable obstacle.
Shida’s eyes widened, as the unseen shield had been the only thing in between her and getting shot by her friend.
“Chak?” she repeated, her voice slightly breaking but much more audible than it had been before the shot. But then the sphere still hovering above her hand began to glow even brighter than before, and soon, even the semblance of her voice that had been allowed to leak through previously was extinguished once again, right in the middle of her sentence. “Chak, what’s goi…”
Her lips still moved, but no sound made it to the princess’ ears, before another shot rang out, hammering against the unseen wall and dispersing into millions of redirected fractions just like the first one had. Behind it, Shida didn’t move. She just stood there and stared into the barrel of the gun with simultaneously sad and furious eyes, while the bright sphere silently hovered over her hand. And slowly, she raised her other hand as well.
Thanking the stars to see Shida safe from her compelled shots, Chak desperately thought of something she could do to fight against that situation.
Clutching the side of his head, Zithra staggered to his hand and knees but faltered from a bout of intense dizziness.
Suddenly Doodle appeared by Chak and grasped at her hand to take the weapon away from her, but even in this new taller and stronger state he couldn’t wrench it free from the iron grip.
But, even more concerning than that was that, as soon as he had stepped up to the disguised princess, he was suddenly feeling…drained. As if something had tapped right into him and was siphoning his power, nay, his very essence away.
“Get back!” he suddenly felt in his bones. It wasn’t an audible command. It was more something like Chak was also feeling at the time, an inescapable command that compelled him to move without his input. Briefly glancing over, he could see his boss. Standing behind a wall of frozen-solid air. She glared at him, a sphere of plasma hovering over one hand while the other was raised as well and -to his elven eyes- shown even brighter than the miniature sun. Her eyes narrowed as she noticed his eyes on her. “GET BACK!” the command repeated, and Doodle neither could nor would withstand it any longer, as he hastily burst away from the princess. Only now did he look down at himself and saw the brightly glowing magic that made up his very being slowly draining away in long lines, unifying with the endlessly bright sphere that Shida held over her seemingly ‘empty’ hand.
And it wasn’t just him. Brightly glowing threats of natural magic came flying in from all around, sucked out from the snow, the glistening lights, and the very cold air itself. And, of course, large quantities of it also emerged from Chak and Zithra, as they were still unnaturally large sources of magic.
Shida’s mouth moved again, but the immobile air between them blocked any sound from getting through. Doodle could practically see the sonic waves bounce off of it and around inside of Shida’s frozen cocoon. However, the magic passed through it just fine, as Shida absorbed more and more of it out of people and environment, collecting it all in a single, concentrated spot, while saying something that only she herself would ever hear.
In a half-blink the elf was gone.
But whatever was occurring caused whatever was in Chak to lurch and recoil before the princess swears it expanded outward.
She fell to her knees, the pistol no longer considered to have a point. Panting she arched her head up to meet Shida’s stare. She saw the anger, the hurt and despite not having control of herself felt at fault.
-She will kill you-
Chak shook her head.
“Sh- she won’t… I’m… I’m not a mimic… Shida I swear… I’m so sorry… I tried… I really tried…” she said in a hoarse voice.
-It’s time-
Bloodied antlers erupt out of her head, and dark reddish brown fur started to coat her skin as her musculature shifted becoming dense. Although remaining humanoid, bestial aspects emerged making her almost appear like some form of twisted demonic Cali. Her boots fell off as hooves stepped out of them and towards the Miyat. Its call made a maddened screech somewhere between human and reindeer.
And finally just as Rudolph charged in a thunderous ram her face flickered a brilliant vengeful red.
Shida’s eyes widened in shock, but not for the reason one might have expected. Seeing no other path, she screamed out in absolute protective fear and thrust forth the hand holding the ball of plasma, causing it to erupt into a large ball of expanding ‘flame’ that was actually just glowing air as it collided with the wall of shock frozen gas. As the enormous amount of energy was released, it basically set the world between them on fire as it instantly consumed Shida’s protective shield, leaving her wide open for the charge while also charring and burning the area all around them, leaving little but soot-covered stone and burned to ash earth behind.
However, she knew had she not done it, consequences would’ve been much worse. Much like her shots earlier, the maddened Cali would’ve torn herself apart on the barrier had it been left standing. And so, Shida had decided to bear the assault herself, widening her legs into a solid stance as she awaited the charging beast, one hand still raised to hold the collection of magic.
Welcoming the beast’s mad charge, Shida extended her arms. Leaning forwards to avoid at least a part of the antlers heading for her heart, she still felt many of their ends pierce into her as the brute force of the attack hit, and her arms closed around Chak in an embrace.
Through all the screaming and huffing, she could still hear the fearful wails of her friend. And not just of her.
“It’s okay,” she said, and despite the pain, she just kept focusing on her left hand. Focussing on collecting all the magic. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Chak, Rudolf, neither of you.”
One of the monster’s eyes looked up at Shida in terror while the other stared forward leaking tears of tremendous fearful apology.
“NO!I know.” its voice gutturally hacked with a soft echoing voice just under it, “STOP! I’m so sorry.” Struggling for a moment as the antlers freed themselves, the beast’s desperate struggle weakened more and more. Both from the sapping, and one mind not contributing to the fight, “I… don’t want… don’t… Do what you need to do. Please… I don’t…”
In a final burst of lacking energy the monster attempted to run away, but found itself unable to pull away from the feline’s grasp. One eye started to glaze over and the other closed, uncertain of what was about to happen.
“I know, old friend,” Shida mumbled, her voice becoming raspy as her eyes momentarily turned over into a pale blue again. “It is unfair. But it won’t be long now.”
Gently, she used her free hand to stroke through the transformed beast’s mane in long, even strokes, while the glazed eye slowly began to close as well.
“It’s alright now…”
The nose light flickered one last time as the glazed eye opened wider for a moment before it slowly joined the other to close.
“Ready… Santaaaa…” it breathed out in a calm release with its final breath as the body went limp. Being pushed out her antlers fell to the ground as Chak’s form reverted back into her Cali form as the magic of her disguise was reclaimed as well. When it was all gone the Cali’s lowers twitched and her eyes cracked open.
“Can you stand?” Shida gently asked as she slightly pulled away from the princess, although her arm was still outstretched to support her friend for the moment.
“Yes…” Chak answered in a soft voice as her hooves found their steady place on the ground.
Shida nodded softly and let go of Chak, taking a step back once she saw that the princess was actually standing on her own. Then, with one last meeting of their gazes, the feline’s eyes returned to normal, and almost immediately, Shida curled in pain and began to cough up some mild splotches of blood.
Using her free hand first to hold her stomach and then a few moments later to pull on her clothes, she then mumbled,
“I’m just breaking all of Dagon’s stuff today…” as she saw the deep holes left in the borrowed shirt by the ramming antlers, while dark-red blood slowly began to seep through it.
“Shida… I’m… I’m so-” Chak began to say before Doodle reappeared from behind the feline.
“Gotcha boss.” He said as he gave a healing session that didn’t last as long as he would’ve liked, as he seemed already drained before starting, “That’ll keep you upright. I’m… gonna lay down, take bat-boy inside too…” the elf wearily muttered as he dragged his feet towards the still prone Manarian.
To the elf only, invisible to anyone else, there was an enormous flash of ‘light’ behind him as soon as he had turned away. And almost immediately after, he could her Shida straighten herself up.
“It’s fine Chak. That wasn’t you,” she said and encouragingly put a hand onto the princess’ shoulder before starting to guide her around with it, starting her off in the direction of the house before letting go again to hurry over towards Zithra with much quicker steps than the dragging Doodle. “Come on big guy,” she said as she leaned down and picked him up with seeming ease, not a hint of her previous injuries remaining behind apart from the damaged clothes. In fact, she almost seemed more lively than before now.
“‘Pluck my ear hairs’ huh?” the Mannarian groaned in a pained chuckle, “Come up with that on the spot or have you been thinking about it for a while? Hopefully I made your steak alright..,” he added as he was assisted back in.
Chak lagged behind the others as everyone got back inside the house, her lowers slowly scratching at the sides of her head.
“To be fair, I said I would rip them out,” Shida replied in a chuckle that didn’t sound quite as humorous as it maybe should’ve. “Much less subtle than plucking. Also hurts a lot more.”
Then, she briefly glanced back while carrying him along.
“We can talk about it inside,” she called back to Chak and made a nodding motion in the direction of the house, almost as if trying to hurry her along.
“R-right.” Chak nodded as she picked up her pace, suddenly feeling exposed. She stepped in and closed the door behind her.
Once the entire group had flooded back into the house, Shida aided Zithra in laying down on the couch she had used as her personal domicile for the last few days. Once he was in a hopefully comfortable position, she patted his shoulder encouragingly.
“Man, she got you good! But it should just be a little bit until you’re fit and ready again,” she encouraged him jovially and rubbed along the side of his arm for a second. “Thank you for throwing yourself into the fray for me like that.”
Chak, trailing slightly behind everyone else, then began to close the door behind herself, witnessing Shida getting up and walking over to Doodle in the process. The feline happily walked -or maybe skipped would almost be a better description- up to the elf and lifted her hands to gently grab him by his upper arms as she inspected him.
“And how are you?” she asked in a just slightly more gentle version of her energetic and happy expression. “I didn’t take too much, did I? You know I wouldn’t want to hurt my favorite elf.”
It was barely noticeable, and maybe she was imagining it, but Chak had the feeling that there was something strange about the way Shida used the word ‘my’ here.
“Nothin’ a little nap won’t fix, boss.” Doodle said with a clearly conflicted expression from the current treatment, “But uhhh… although I’m your only elf at the moment I’ll take it, heh…”
“Oh, Doodle,” Shida replied and briefly lifted her hand to lightly tap against his cheek with her fingertips. “You know my name. Use it.”
With that, she let go of the elf and sauntered past him, heading towards Chak.
The Cali reflexively nearly stepped back from the feline’s approach as an alarm rang in her head, however she didn’t quite know what the alarm was trying to warn her. Shida just saved her from the curse, this was still her friend, but something was off.
“Are you feeling alright Shida? That entity came through you again, so I just want to be sure you’re still feeling like yourself.” she said as her lowers cross-wrapped around her waist to make herself feel more secure after her own intense experience.
Shida chuckled to herself as she came closer, slightly crouching down in front of the Cali with her hands on her knees.
“Yes, I’m feeling alright. Great actually,” she announced -or maybe proclaimed was a better word for it- happily and slightly tilted her head to the side while her ears stood straight up. “And of course I’m feeling like myself. Who else would I be?”
Taking one of her hands off her knee, she lifted it to Chak’s face, rubbing some smudges of what was presumably her own blood off the Cali’s face.
“You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked clearly caringly, although her voice didn’t quite reach the depths of gentleness that Chak knew it could get to. “That ‘entity’ didn’t do anything to you, did it? I’m sorry I had to ‘handle’ you like this, but trying to use my own magic to make my dear friend hurt me? Well, I couldn’t just let that slide.”
“Your magic? Shida, it’s not yours. It’s… you know what it is.” Chak replied as an upper hand to take hold of one of Shida’s hand as she stared intensely back into the feline’s eyes, looking for any clue of outside influence.
But there wasn’t anything. Shida’s eyes were their usual yellow selfs.
“Of course it’s mine. Rudolf was Santa’s reindeer, after all, not Krampus’. Santa might not be around, but I inherited all his magic,” Shida happily explained, before closing her eyes and lowering her head to rub it against the hand that was holding her arm, a loud, almost drumming purring erupting from her chest almost instantaneously. “But I’m glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would do if I had hurt my dear friend.”
Chak’s eyes lit up by the slightest bit, but she quickly packed away her feelings much easier than in her Terran form. She’s actually immensely grateful to be a Cali again, otherwise she might have faltered to the feline’s affections.
“You’re acting differently.” she informed bluntly, “Up until now you have been resentful of the magic forced upon you. You and I both know it wasn’t ‘inherited’, it was unwillingly forced!” She reiterated with a spark of anger, “I am your dear friend, I will always be. But with my mind clear of the magic please listen. As your friend, do you want me to be subservient to something that can take my mind and body away from me? Do you want magic that would do that to me? To you? Shida, it tried to make me kill you, and then it tried to force you to kill me. Don’t claim this magic as yours… you’re better than it. You don’t need it, it only needs you, but that doesn’t make it yours. I’m glad you’re okay, and I trust you. But I don’t want to lose you in the way you almost lost me.” the princess implored as she scratched at the sides of her head, “We know what this magic does to our heads. And I promise you if you start slipping like I did, I’ll do anything it takes to save you and get you out of here. You promised me you’d do that for me, remember? And although I can’t tell you to ‘stay Shida’ in the same way you told me to remain me, I’ll keep reminding you of who you are, no matter how the magic makes you feel or how it tries to influence you.”
The Cali then opened her lowers and tightly embraced the feline.
“You’re my friend.” she stated, mimicking the cadence Shida had used to make a point.
Shida chuckled slightly to herself, returning Chak’s embrace in full, and the princess could clearly feel how much the feline enjoyed this - the intensity of her purring being a good indication, but not the only one.
“Thank you Chak,” she said in a voice that sounded genuinely happy. “And I would never have killed you.”
After holding the hug for a good while, Shida finally began to peel away from Chak, standing up straight again. At first she just smiled down at Chak, however then she started to sniff the air slightly.
“Well…if I’m acting weird…maybe I’m just hungry,” she joked and looked around, remembering that there had been talks of a steak earlier. After a moment of searching, she found the plate that had previously been prepared for her and quickly moved over to take it.
Testing the meat’s temperature with a few quick pokes at it, she momentarily grimaced. However it didn’t last long, because she very briefly lifted her hand to it. Chak couldn’t see anything that happened exactly, but the feline’s expression slowly shifted back into her previous happy one, before she let her hand sink down again and carried the obtained food over to the table to eat it.
However as soon as she had sat down, she looked around confusedly for a moment, before scoffing -presumably at herself- and gently tapping against her own forehead.
“Forgot the cutlery,” she chuckled, and then she almost seemed contemplative again. But whatever she was pondering didn’t last long, as she took one look over at Chak before getting up again to get herself the necessary eating utensils.