*Boom*,... *Boom*,... *Boom*,... *Boom*,... *Boom*....

Two women sat on the porch of an old house. Watching the forests that lay beyond the front gate. Beyond that forest was a swiftly shifting landscape, filled with swirls of white and endless blue. Tamra observed it all, not only watching from where she sat, but from a more profound place, gaining a more holistic sense of her surroundings.

Her true form, her chicken-legged house in the haunted wood could shift forms, it didn’t need to just be a house, it could be castle, a fortress, anything that could at all be considered a form of domicile.

Right now it sat somewhere between being a log cabin and a forbidding military fort complete with spike tipped walls. Wherever the house went, so too went the forest, thus any who saw it, would see only smoke coming from the smokestack and a flowing sea of green. They wouldn’t see the chicken legged castle till it was too late and too close.

As the house stomped through the heavens leaping betwixt the floating isles one question came to mind.

“How am I sitting inside my house, if I ‘am’ the house?”

The  answer was of course “magic”, but if she wanted a proper answer it’d take some figuring out.

It was a question that had gradually grown to bother her for the last few hundred years or so. She’d never voiced it out loud for fear of looking foolish, but it still nagged at her that she didn’t know. She wished Billy was there, he’d likely know the answer and he definitely wouldn’t make fun of her for not knowing.

Honestly, if there ‘was’ someone granting wishes, she’d settle for just having Billy there period. Two thousand years was a very long time. She missed his voice, his touch, his slightly clueless lack of expression. As a woman,  as a house, as a forest, as an immortal... whatever it was she really was wanted him inside her...in all senses of the word.

“Oi, hey...Tam, We’re here.” said a light voice, that handily demolished Tamra’s train of thought.

“Huh? Oh...I knew that.” said Tamra.  And she did, or least the house did. Stomping into the enemy camp, crushing machinery and tents and whichever soldiers were foolish enough to try and get in the way of her, “High”-Ranked self.

“Alright then...so long you know.” said Isodel, returning to the crocheting that she’d been doing on the trip over.

Tamra watched Isodel return to her work, watching the fast moving knitting needles with a feeling of mild consternation.

“So...uh...don’t get this wrong, but I’ve been wondering, why the hell are you older than me?” said Tamra.

Isodel paused her knitting needles held aloft, she’d honestly expected to have this conversation a few hundred years ago, but that Tamra for you, if it was about her William, or about work she tended to just let it go by the wayside. Her personality just generally too awkward to  allow her to extend the conversation outside those two circles. She was a lot like Edna that way.

Forward-focused like a wild Boar or a drilling machine. Though admittedly Tamra just a tad more awkward and a tad more zealous.

Isodel loosed a breath, looking at her hands which calloused from working with weaponry, and tools. She looked at woman across from her, whose bod still the appearance it had when they first came to the heavenly plane.

Then she imagined what the other woman was seeing, it wasn’t hard since she’d seen the same every time she looked into a mirror. A face that was creased with laugh lines, a body that was slightly wider and rounded. If the other woman still looked like she was a maiden just out of her teens, Isodel looked like a woman just exiting her thirties.

“Mhm…let’s call it a tactical decision.”said Izzy.

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“What? You’re older than me because of the War?!” said Tam. Taken aback.

It made “some” sense, on Monde everyone knew that there was a ten year difference between the wife of a tanner and the wife of a lord. Wealth versus poverty, peace versus strife. Fearing for your life aged a person. Worry could kill just as easily as blades and spells. And yet...that explanation didn’t quite sit right.

After all they, Tam and Izzy, were immortals. With the exception of their true forms which would only change as they advanced through the rankings, their bodies were entirely mutable.

In fact they could go without any bodies at all if they so pleased, dissolving their essence and mingling it with the heavenly plane’s as some of the older celestials, devils and gods opted to do whenever they’d decided they wanted a break from their interminable existences. In other words the only thing that could age for an immortal was their mind.

Izzy rolled her eyes and sighed, as she saw Tamra trying to puzzle it out.

“No...at least not this war. I’m talking about what comes after.”

“What comes after? Nothing comes after...afterwards we go home.” Tamra paused and thought about it. As far as she knew there was nothing else for them to do after the war of the gods was settle.

If the world at large knew what was good for it, things would stay that way. Only two thousand of the ten thousand years for the plan’s cycle had gone by and she was already feeling wearied.

She loved her students and had grown used to being a teacher, but centuries of having some jackass come into her turf and kick over her trees, was enough to make her want kill something….possibly several somethings. In fact that was the entire purpose of their current little trip.

The Principal’s pals had arrived at the school and it was finally safe for Izzy and her to go have a little jaunt beyond the floating Isle that they’d called home for the last few millenia. While Tamra was a homebody and Isodel didn’t have any places that she really wanted to go or see, there was one place that they knew had to visited at least once.

“Yes exactly…” said Isodel.

“Exactly what?” said Tam.

“Exactly. Once everything is done up here, we’re all going back home to Monde, right. You, Ed and Ell are all pretty much his wives. Ophelia’s getting there and Alessa eventually will too...That leaves me the odd girl out. That’s why I needed to grow up.”

“...Izzy, you know you’ll always have a place in our family. In fact even if you’d just let Billy adopt as daughter or sister or whatever, you’d have still been safe. And no you’re so powerful that that’s no longer a concern. There’s no, need to worry about moving on and doing your own thing...unless of course that’s what you want to do. In which case you know you’ve got my support and probably everyone else’s as well.”

Isodel nodded, touched, though slightly concerned over whether or not, Tamra had just tried to talk her into leaving. Though that might well have been her imagination.

“Um...just to be clear, I wasn’t thinking of leaving, Super wasn’t. You know, just to be clear.” said Isodel.

She’d been already been aware that her friend Billy would protect her against the very hounds of hell, should the need arise, long ago. She’d had other reasons, both sentimental and pragmatic, for proposing, reasons that’s still stood relevant even now that she could kill gods.

“....Okay. Then what’s with the whole getting old schtick?” said Tamra.

“Old? I’m not old. Mature maybe, but definitely not old...And don’t interrupt, I was getting to that.” said Isodel. Shedding a bit of her serenity as she grew perturbed with her friend’s attempts to talk her out of a marriage.

“...Okay then, go on.” said Tamra.

“Simply, put, I let myself grow because I was pretty sure I needed to. I spent quite of my life asleep, y’know. It felt like growing was something I had to do. I needed that extra bit of aging in both body and mind.”

“Something you had to do?” said Tamra.

“Right.” said Isodel.

The dark haired girl considered the pale haired girl’s words, then she nodded, seeming to accede the point.

“...I get that.”

Isodel sighed, as a person Tamra could be quite vexing, when she wanted to be. Then she smiled.

“I thought you would.

*****

Elsewhere, just a little beyond the front gate of the house, on the outer edge of the roaming black wood lay the camp of the two hundred and fourteenth Eternal Standing Army of the Eight Million Gods.

They lay in disarray scrambling to reform their ranks as the black trees burst through their camp. Tearing everything asunder.

The Commander of Army stood in his tent, uncomprehending and terrified as he found his body disobeying him. Staring at the eerie, silken threads that had somehow wound their way around his arm. Making his hand clapse a dagger and drawing that dagger to his neck.

The house itself never stopped walking, it and the forest idly strode through the camp leaving only flattened tents and pulped flesh as they passed.

“Hey, weren’t those the guys we were headed for?” said Isodel. Pointing behind her.

Tamra shook her head.

“Nah, if you want to actually see a change in the behavior of an organization, its usually best to go complain to the management.” said Tamra.

“Oh, so we’re going to go chat, with the higher ups?” said Isodel.

“Right.”

“Alright, um then we could go out to eat something, there’s been restaurants I’ve been dying to try.” said Isodel.

“I don’t see why not.” said Tamra. As the big house continued to stomp and make havoc in the sky.