Sally and I looked at each other and realized that we’d both blurted out our exclamation at the same time.

“You heard that, right?” Sally said. I nodded vigorously. The others looked at us. We were drawing attention to ourselves.

“Whatever this is, Sally,” Mellie said in her haughty tone, trying to force us back into our roles, “it can wait until later.” She turned to the innkeep. “Impossible to get good help these days.” He nodded, more out of obligation, it seemed, than anything else. I got the feeling he just wanted to lock his doors and go to bed. I wasn’t opposed to that; we had maybe half an hour before the spell ran out, and that was just going off my biological clock.

I expected us to be brought to our rooms, but the man seemed to be tired. I didn’t know what his day had been like, so I tried not to judge when he nearly slapped Lillian in the face with a towel to show her where the rooms were. There were two adjacent ones with three beds each. It would have to do. We were about to head up when the innkeep gestured at Sabine with clear suspicion.

“What’s wrong with her?” he grunted.

“She’s our friend, but she was hurt while travelling. She needs rest,” Lillian said. “We all do.”

“Hmm,” he grunted. “The army’ll be through here tomorrow. You better not be slaving.”

We looked at each other, then at Sabine. “Do… Do we look like slavers to you?” Mellie said with genuine disbelief. Either that, or she was acting so well I couldn’t tell.

He shook his head. “Can’t be too careful. Best keep your friend safe. There’s talk of strange folk abroad.” Sally and I shot each other another wide-eyed look. Once was a coincidence. Twice was just weird.

“Does this town have a healer of some kind?”

He shook his head again. “We’ve got a midwife. She knows her stuff, but she can’t do magic.“ He paused. “I heard there’s magic folks down in Arrington. Might be able to help you lot.” He looked us over. “None of you can do magic?”

Erza, keeping up appearances, just grunted and jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Sabine.

“Ah… unfortunate.” And that seemed to be the end of the conversation. He simply stopped talking, and after a second, began wiping down the bar without looking at any of us. We took the hint.

Mellie and Lily took the first room, with Erza. Two rich women and their bodyguard, while the help heaped into the other room. The actual reason, of course, was that it put the four of us whose spells were about to run out in the same room with Sabine. Now, all we had to do was hope she’d wake up. But if the illusion ran out now, we’d at least have a place to hide.

I walked into the room. It wasn’t big, but it was on the second floor. The windows weren’t big, and the curtains were flimsy, but the odds of us being seen were slim at best. Tilly set her pack down by one of the beds and sighed dramatically, flexing her fuzzy little arms, and jumped onto the bed.

“Oh no you don’t, pipsqueak,” Sally said, and walked over to her as she was getting comfortable, invisible under the blankets. “You’re two feet tall, you’re not taking up a bed all on your own.”

She had a point.

“Three feet!” Tilly squeaked. We looked. She wasn’t wrong. Instead of the furball that jumped up, a Kobold’s nose peeked out from under the covers. Looks like we hadn’t gotten here a moment too soon. I hurried to get Sabine to a bed. She moaned softly as her head hit the pillow, just in time for my vision to go black. I stumbled for a second and then stopped moving when I realized I was bumping into things and that would only get worse the bigger I got. I tried to kneel in place carefully and waited for my sight to come back. After a second, it did.

Kazumi was trying to get out of her pants as quickly as possible while running to get under the covers to conceal her modesty, which was an… interesting sight. I heard her hissing softly, and I imagined she didn’t bring several dozen spare pants. She just about managed to get in bed when I heard what sounded like somebody dropping a beach-ball sized lump of dough on the floor. With a wet slap, Kazumi unfurled, her lower body extending through the room. It was easy to forget how lengthy she was. The look of relief on her face was a sight to behold.

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She looked at me. I’d moved the bed a little bit by bumping into it, but I was mostly fine. I turned to look at Sally. She was already getting into bed. For her, the transformation wasn’t nearly as drastic. She’d learned how to make her wings go in when she slept -- I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable those would be otherwise -- and scooted in next to Tilly. Apparently they were both comfortable enough to be sharing a bed. Not that I could imagine her taking up much space.

Kazumi slithered out of bed again, now that she didn’t have to worry about looking decent, and joined me at the bed next to Sabine, who was making soft mewling sounds, like she was having a nightmare. I gently put a hand on her forehead to wipe the hair out of her face. It was strange to be this big again, but remarkably familiar. I realized that, with the three of us here, we’d brought home with us, and that was strangely comforting. Sabine’s eyes fluttered, as if she was trying to wake up.

“Sabine,” Kazumi lisped softly. “Can you hear me?”

Another soft noise. Suddenly, Sabine inhaled sharply and her eyes flew open and then closed again. Her left arm shot to her right and she gasped in pain.

“Careful!” Kazumi and I both said.

“Wh whah?” Sabine managed. “What -- Where -- What happened? Where am…” She trailed off as she looked around the room. “Where are the others? Did something… Did I fail…” She barely had the energy to panic, but it looked like she was going to give it a go anyway. It was a painful sight. I leaned in close, partly to give her a comforting kiss on her forehead, and partly to hide the fact that I was already tearing up. She was awake. I couldn’t be more relieved.

“Hey,” I said, and looked her in her beautiful face. “You got hurt when you fell over. Nobody else got hurt, thanks to you.”

She fell back against the pillow and exhaled. She looked over to Kazumi and I saw both of their faces light up, and they shared a soft kiss.

“I’m glad everyone is okay. Where… are we?”

“Where we planned to be,” Kazumi said happily. I noticed her wiping away a tear herself, and there was a small moment of triumph. I wasn’t the only one, at least. Kazumi reached out to hold Sabine’s hand, realized that that was probably a bad idea, and then just gently put a hand on her leg. “How are you feeling?”

Sabine winced again as she was made aware of her broken arm, and inhaled carefully. “It hurts. A lot. I think I can do something about it, but…” She held up her left arm and little blue flames danced over her skin. “It’s going to take me a while. This is a lot harder with just one hand.”

“I could help?” I offered.

She shook her head. “I’m not quite as dead as was when you reattached my head, love. Everything is a lot more… delicate, now.”

“When you what?!” Sally yelped. Tilly had the decency to look embarrassed.

“She’s fine now,” I said, and looked back to Sabine, who’d fired up her magic again.

She moved her hand to her elbow and I heard the most disgusting crunching noise. Sabine’s face immediately warped into a horrifying mask of pain and I saw her entire body tense up as she was trying not to scream.

“Hold on!” Kazumi said, “bite on this!” She held up a strap from one of the packs. Sabine bit down on the leather, and her magic flared back up. I could imagine she wasn’t willing to wait too long, and the crunching sound resumed. I hoped that what she was doing was setting it, at least. I imagined that, had she not been, you know, dead, that sweat would be dripping down her face. Her eyes alternated between flying open, and clamping shut as she took heaving breaths. Kazumi and I both tried to give her the space to breathe while simultaneously trying to be as close to her as possible.

After a few minutes that felt like days, she relaxed. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until I finally exhaled.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “I set the bone, but everything around has to heal. It’s…” Her head dropped a little bit. If I hadn’t been paying attention I wouldn’t have noticed it. “It’s harder to heal dead tissue.” She looked at our worried faces.

“I’ll be okay in a couple of hours. Don’t worry, loves. I’ll be fine. The magic needs to do its work.” She reached out and squeezed my hand, and then Kazumi’s. “And I’ll be okay to redo your illusions in time, don’t worry. Did you get here in time?”

We nodded.

“Just in the nick of time,” Kazumi said.

“And the others?”

I pointed to the wall. “Just next door. We thought it was best to have all of us in the same room as you and hope you woke up.”

She smiled and winced again.

“Try to get some sleep,” Kazumi said, and gently kissed Sabine again. My heart did that thing where it makes you feel like you can do a backflip. When they pulled away, Sabine pulled me in for one too, awkward as the size difference was.

I looked at the bed. It was much too small for me, and Kazumi would have to do some serious tetrising to get in there, and even then it might collapse. I looked around. If someone walked in, we’d instantly be exposed, so I did the uncomfortable thing. I took my pack, leaned it against the door, and sat down in front of it, trying to get comfortable.

“What are you doing?” Sally asked.

“Blocking the door,” I said.

“But that looks uncomfortable as shit!”

I shrugged. “I’ve honestly slept in worse conditions, Sally. I’ll be fine.”

Kazumi looked at me with pity, standing next to the bed. Then, she seemed to come to a conclusion, grabbed the pillow, and flung it at my head at high velocity.

“Wh--” I said.

“If you’re going to be sleeping on the floor,” she said matter-of-factly as she dragged the duvet over to me, “You’re not doing it alone. Scoot.”

I made room for her, and she tossed the blanket over me, then slithered underneath it, wrapping herself around my pulled-up legs and resting against my chest.

“Awwww,” Sally said. Tilly grinned at us. I looked at Sabine. She was already asleep, bless her heart. I was glad she was getting healing done, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the difficulty of it wasn’t weighing on her, in more ways than just physical.

“Hey,” Kazumi said. “There’s a free bed now, Tilly. You have a sheet in your pack, you know.”

“I’m good,” she said quietly, and I heard Sally snigger as she turned over and blew out the candle by the bedside.I kissed Kazumi on top of her head and felt a little kiss on my chin in return.

“Night, love.”

“Night, Kazumi.”

And we drifted off. I just wish we’d gotten more sleep than we did before we woke to the sound of heavy boots on the stairs.