Vonne isn’t kidding about us having pie. I load a tray up with a selection of food, mostly skewers of alternating meat and vegetables, rice, bread, and a tangy sauce, and Vonne hands me, with absolute gravity, two small plates, each with a slice of pie on them.

“Apple,” she says, pointing to one of them. I’m about to object and tell her that yes, I’m aware of the existence of apples and apple pie, but she continues on, blithely. “Cherry crumble, that one’s my favorite. But the apple is more consistent.”

I realize I’ve frozen and force myself to start moving again. “Cherry, huh.”

“Is there something wrong with cherry? If you don’t like it, you don’t have to have it! It’s not mandatory!”

“No, no, it’s… not that.” I look at the slice of pie, not really seeing it. My thoughts feel slow, and my voice goes on without me. “Cherries are sort of a cultural thing where I came from, that’s all.”

“Oh! You really like them, then?”

“We… it’s been a very long time since the last cherry tree in that universe died. Something like five hundred years.”

Vonne seems to freeze in… horror, really, and as if she’s trying to figure out what to do next. That turns out to be balancing her tray on two of her tails, which, okay, I’m pretty sure she only had one of those a moment ago, not three. “I’m going to hug you now,” she says with a quiet, implacable firmness.

She’s a really good hugger. After a few moments, my breathing, which I hadn’t even realized was fast and shallow and strained, relaxes, and my muscles start to relax from their wired-tight state, the burning in my throat fading. I put my tray to the side, up on one of the two-parallel-rails contraptions that run below the counters and are obviously made for this purpose, and lean back into her. My arms tighten around her arms, which themselves are around my chest, and she effortlessly takes my weight, tails wrapping around my waist and legs to hug me there, too.

A few seconds later, my stomach growls loudly, breaking the moment. She breaks off as if startled, and we both start giggling, with me barely suppressing it turning into something more. “Thanks,” I say instead, trying to make it heartfelt. “It’s… there’s a saying, you know, or well, you don’t know. Tell it to the cherry blossoms, when you want to say someone is putting forward arguments to support a wasteful or destructive cause of action.”

“I don’t, can’t, know what that’s like. But here.” She drops a muffin, a scone, and a baked bar of some sort onto my tray. “Cherries,” she says by way of explanation, and her face sort of quivers.

“Hey,” I start, and I’m not sure how to go on or finish. I want to say something like you don’t need to be sad on my behalf or you’re making this weird, because she kind of is, but I also very much don’t want to say either of those things. “We don’t even know if I like them yet. And it’s not even a sensible cultural thing! Cherry blossoms and cherry trees aren’t the same tree. I mean, they’ve both been extinct about the same amount of time, but… you’re laughing at me.”

“It’s okay! If you don’t like ‘em, I’ll eat ‘em up! They’re delicious!”

“Are you… did you just… tilt your head and wink in a deliberately exaggerated way, while framing your winking eye with your index finger and pinkie? Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Yup! Means I’m silly!”

I snicker with her while we finish loading food onto our plates. I grab a couple of long, three-quarter-cylindrical green vegetable stalks, firm and probably crunchy, that have been filled with something that looks vaguely nutty and brown, dotted with yellow and dark orange, and she gives me a weird look. “What? This looks good. I bet it’s going to be both crunchy and smooth in a neat contrasting way.”

“Oh! You don’t know what they are. That makes sense.” She vanishes, dashing off to another counter, while I stand there looking awkward and a little confused. She shows back up with two little transparently-covered packets of whiteness with a little bit of green flecking in them, and puts them on one of the few empty areas on my plate. “Here! It’s the nullifier.”

I’m about to ask nullifier for what when my brain catches up and blocks the insipid statement from exiting my mouth. “Thanks. Looks like it’s a peel the film off, pop the gel or whatever into my mouth kind of thing?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Gel? No, no, you use a tiny spoon.” She points to where there’s flatware at the exit-flow that we’re approaching, and glasses of water. There’s a bored gotz on a stool, eyes flickering up from a book to scowl at our trays; the eyes go back down with a grunt immediately afterwards, and I keep walking in Vonne’s wake. “The tiniest! Spoon of null-ta, big sip of water, swish it around so it can bind everywhere, keep doing that till done.”

“Huh.” I commit that to memory, just in case. “Oh, uh, how do we… pay for this?”

“We don’t.” Her voice loses none of its chipperness. “If you’re below the third ring, you pay in mana or stone. But we’re not! The Lady says we should focus on being the best we can be.”

“Historically, when someone’s told me that, it’s because they’re taking advantage of me.”

“Oh, she is! I mean, we’re… not eligible, not really. For the Tournament, I mean.” She pauses in the middle of the room, tail drooping, and I’m distracted for a moment by the fact that yes, she’s back to having one tail. “I’m not much in a fight,” she mumbles. “I never will be, no matter what tier I am. I like puzzles and I like people and I like hugging.”

“Well, so far I can attest that you’re incredibly good at two out of three of those.” I bump her hip with mine, startling her; she stumbles to the side, catches herself, and then comes back to bump hips back. “Where are we sitting?”

“Anywhere. They can all bubble up. Um. If you don’t mind.”

“It’s fine.” I grin at her. “I’m not much good in a fight, either. I’m not a total chump in a punch-up, but basically all of my heavy lifting is from my orbs. So what’s this bubbling up?”

“Here.” We grab a small table, barely big enough for the both of us. The chairs are middlingly comfortable, but they have open backs, which I figure is probably important for her tail. Tails, plural? Well, singular right now. “Put your palm in the center, next to mine.”

Visor up, I comply. There’s just enough space between our trays for the two of us to put our hands flat on the table, and her pinky curls around my thumb as I watch an undercurrent of mana, no, two undercurrents of mana rise and pass through our hands. I raise an eyebrow at her and she squirms adorably, but doesn’t move her hand.

I’m dense, but I’m not that dense. “Does it actually take both of our hands to bring up the bubble?”

“Ye-yeah! Um. About three more seconds.”

My eyebrow stays up, but I wait, and two and a half seconds later, according to my Visor, there’s a snap sound and all of the sound from the larger room cuts out. Vision’s blurred, too, and tinted just the tiniest bit pink, which is kind of funny because pink is a funny color in its own right, and I realize I haven’t moved my hand either.

You’d think I was too old to be falling for everyone I meet at the slightest chance, but in my defense, I’ve never really had a reason to learn not to.

“What’s your intent in flirting with me?”

The question makes Vonne blush visibly, which is funny because I wouldn’t have guessed that that would have transferred to her physiognomy. “Um. Cuddles? Puzzles? I don’t… I like people. I’m sed, of course I like to make people happy! But it’s not just that, if it were just that, it would be weird, wouldn’t it? There are sed who… wait.” She cocks her head at me, then releases my hand, though it takes me a moment to reclaim it. “You’re an Outsider! You don’t even know!”

I take a bite of one of my skewers. “Mmm?”

“Okay, okay. Um. I kinda don’t want to tell you but that would be unethical! Because if I want to do anything with you, even just if I want to be friends with you, you need to… to understand, and also, how did nobody tell you? Um. Well, probably everyone forgot. So.” She starts eating, chomping down on what looks like chicken that’s been pan-cooked with some aliums and some spherical and spherically-adjacent fruits I don’t recognize. She switches smoothly to “talking” through what my Visor recognizes as a Skill, Prestidigitation, while she eats. “How much do you know about the Firstborn?”

I chew determinedly, having gotten a piece of vegetable that takes a fair bit of it. It goes down eventually, which gives me time to process what I’m hearing. “I… think I’ve heard the name before?” I frown. “In relation to the… Temple Lands? Who are not really a geographic area so much as they are an autarchy that has embassies across the continent?”

“You’re not totally wrong! Okay. It’s great that you don’t know much, because what most people know is all wrong!” Vonne sounds genuinely relieved. “Most people don’t even know that the Temple Lands follow the First Paladin. How’d you know?”

“Amber.” I shrug. “She… got recruited by them? And Zidanya knows them of old, she says, but she won’t elaborate.”

“Your Reca! She’s amazing. Katavya did a thing on her! I wanna meet her and cuddle her, she looks so soft and also so strong!” I sort of stare at her for a moment, processing that, and she doesn’t seem to notice. “Okay. Firstborn. Sed. I’m gonna have to go way back for this! Um. Usually when I tell a story I’m all 'and here’s the chain of provenance' and usually that takes a long time, but I have this from Do who had it from Do’s dam, who was made in the Court of Brilliance Everchanging. So, short!

“Anyway.” Her voice changes, becoming a little slower, a little less frenetic. “This is the story, as I heard it told. Zekhira be my guide as I tell it true.”