Chapter 45: Rivers
Alex Sandclaw’s POV:
Felix was gone by the time I got out of the shower. Did I need a shower? Not really, but it had done wonders on my sore muscles. It was disappointing that I was alone again, but on the other hand, I didn’t have to worry about Felix being shy about my nakedness. He said he didn’t care, but he still got all flustered, anyway. It was kind of cute and it gave me a thrill I couldn’t quite explain.
In any case, I wasn’t planning on stopping. Felix didn’t mind, and it was a habit at this point. I hadn’t even thought about what I was doing the first few times until I noticed Felix very pointedly looking away a few days ago. I had felt embarrassed and had apologized.
“It’s okay,” Felix had said. “Don’t mind me. If this is something you’re used to, I won’t stop you. This is your room too, now, remember? You should get to feel at home here. Besides, I don’t think I should get to complain about this, given my situation.”
It was a little odd, but also very sweet of him. I promised myself to keep it in mind the next time he did something that annoyed me. If he was willing to accommodate me, the least I could do was to return that favor.
I picked up my key, feeling its comforting heft in my hand. I wrapped my fingers around it and pressed it to my chest just like Felix had done when he’d given it to me. A home. I had a home, again. Sure, I had my own dorm room, too, but that wasn’t home. It was too… lonely to be a home. But our room felt every bit as warm as my room felt cold. This space actually felt lived in.
I put the key away and put on a pair of pants, but not a shirt. I was finally taking Felix up on his offer from a while ago and I wasn’t going to be wearing t-shirts anymore while in our room. The uncomfortable cloth could be set on fire for all I cared. It just kept riding up and getting annoyingly bunched up at my ridges. Sadly, I’d still have to wear it outside; social etiquette demanded it. At least it didn’t have sleeves.
I had plenty of time before I had to leave, so I decided to make up my bed and clean up my space. We had moved my bedframe here last weekend and put it down underneath the loft. Felix had also gotten wire and curtains, which he’d hung up there, too. It separated the room and gave me some privacy when I wanted it. The gesture was appreciated, but I mostly just kept the curtains open. It made the room feel bigger, and I didn’t have anything to hide, anyway.
Besides, I was already used to sharing my space with someone else. I’d done so for most of my life. Granted, that had been with my parents and little brother, not my friend, but it didn’t really matter. The only reason I could imagine wanting privacy was when I was jerking off, but I wouldn’t be doing that in our room, anyway. I’d do that in the showers like I usually did. The thought of doing it here, out in the open where Felix could listen in… it sent a shiver down my spine. I wasn’t sure if it was one of excitement or discomfort, and that bothered me. I was having these kinds of thoughts more and more often lately and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Why would I want Felix to listen in? I shook my head, willing the thoughts away, and continued making my area neat.
After putting away my books and clothes, I made the bed. After that, I laid down on the covers and opened our book. We’d almost finished it, and I couldn’t wait for us to discuss it. We should probably pick up a new book this afternoon, too, when we went to the library. I looked forward to it.
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Basic Flight was as fun as it always was, and I learned a great deal. A few things I could apply to flying with Felix, too, when we could do that again. That was good, since if our plans continued like they did, it seemed I would soon have to take a class on fighting with a flying mount, and this was a good place to start.
I hated calling Felix a mount, though. It was his role in the situation, sure, but the word was demeaning. A mount was controlled. Ridden upon. Felix wasn’t that. Sure I could guide him, but he made the choices of where to go in the end.
He also didn’t like being called a beast, and this felt the same as that. He said he didn’t mind, but I could tell it bothered him a bit when someone called him a mount, anyway. It bothered me, too. But what else would I call him? It was the single best word to describe his role within the team. My-friend-who-I-ride-in-combat just sounded dumb and weird.
I thought back to Sekara’s words; was there really a need to describe it? Why not just say ‘friend’? No, that wouldn’t work either. I couldn’t go around saying I rode my friend, they’d get the wrong idea. I still didn’t know what it referenced exactly, but I knew enough from the books I’d read that it was a sex thing.
I sighed. I wasn’t figuring this out right now.
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I opened the door to the Basic Lightning Magic classroom. Felix was already there. He sat near the side like he usually did. A smile was plastered on his snout, so he must have gotten some good news from healer Elena.
I sat down next to him and peeked at the book he was reading. It was our book, and he was reading the last few pages. I quickly looked away before I spoiled the ending for myself. As much as you could spoil a romance book, anyway. The two main characters would end up together no matter what happened. I just hoped it wasn’t with a forced fight. There had already been two in the book, and the author had the tendency to do things in threes, so it wouldn’t surprise me. As much fun as the book was, I hoped the next would be better.
“Have you thought about the next book yet?” I asked Felix.
“I have, and no, I’m not telling you.” He stuck out his tongue.
I rolled my eyes and started unpacking my stuff. I took out the heavy lightning cube with a sigh. I was getting closer to figuring it out, I could feel it. But it would not be happening this week. I had too much knowledge and time to make up for. At least I could now draw out my own mana without assistance from the Siphon after yesterday’s magic class. Sometimes, anyway. Maybe once every ten tries. It was all still difficult and would take time to master. So many things to learn, and so little time to do it.
I looked up when Professor Hobold walked into the classroom and immediately started his lecture. He hadn’t even waited to close the door. It seemed he wasn’t in a time-wasting mood today. Fine with me. I made notes while he lectured us. He stopped when there were only thirty minutes left. I was glad for that; all this droning had turned my brain to mush. This last half-hour was reserved for guided practice with the cube.
With effort, I grabbed the cube and started practicing. I was glad I also had to practice my mana drawing at the same time, though. Drawing mana took more time now than before, since I wasn’t using the Siphon anymore, so it let me get fewer shocks since I wasn’t using the cube as often. Sadly, that would improve with time, eliminating my excuse bit by bit.
With each attempt to absorb the lightning mana back in, I got a little closer to figuring it out. Like a lake filling up with water, building pressure until the dam cracked. Eventually I would reach a threshold and absorb the mana back in. Maybe not all at once, but once I reached that point it was only a matter of repetition to reabsorb all of it.
About fifteen minutes in, Felix yelled out with pain, interrupting my focus and causing me to let the mana I had so painfully slowly gathered from my pool slip back in. I looked up at him, glaring. I was expecting a frown on his snout, but instead he had a huge grin plastered on his face. He held the cube above his head in victory and I realized it hadn’t pain he’d yelled out for, but triumph.
“You did it?” I asked, his excitement bleeding over into my voice.
He grinned at me. “I did it!”
I laughed and gave him a quick hug. “No more shocks, then? That’s awesome!”
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His grin faltered a bit, but didn’t go away entirely. “Not quite. I can absorb maybe a tenth of the mana, so the rest still shocks me. But not nearly as hard as before.”
I smiled at him and lightly punched him on the shoulder. “That’s still amazing!”
His grin came back to full strength. “It is, yeah!”
Felix explained how he had gone about it, and some of the stuff resonated with what I already knew. It gave me ideas of new things to try and got me excited to keep trying. Later, though. Right now I wanted to celebrate this small moment with Felix. He more than deserved the small break after receiving so many shocks.
After a minute or so, the professor walked over to check what all the commotion had been about. Apparently we’d been louder than we’d meant to. Oops? Professor Hobold was excited to learn one of his students actually managed to do the exercise. According to him, it was where he’d lost the most students each year. Not nearly everyone was able to partially reabsorb the mana, let alone fully reabsorb it to unlock a relevant Skill—less than a tenth of all students each year. It made me worry about my own progress, but I decided it didn’t matter. I already knew I would succeed. I felt it deep in the bones of my tail.
One of the things that caught my attention about the whole conversation was that professor Hobold never actually asked if Felix had unlocked a Skill. Others would think he just respected Felix’s privacy, but I knew better. The professor probably knew Felix’s secret. It made sense that a professor would, but it still stung a little that others knew, too. On some level, it had felt like it was just our secret.
I listened in on the rest of the conversation as the professor guided Felix through absorbing the mana. By the end of the class, Felix had brought his original ten percent of reabsorbed mana up to fifteen, and I felt closer to the threshold than I ever had.
[Skill ‘mana manipulation’ has leveled up! 8->9]
Nice. Another level. I tried drawing out some mana and felt it coming out ever so slightly smoother and easier. I smiled. One step at a time, huh? I’d get there, eventually. And then I’d burn the damned siphon.
After the class, Felix and I dropped off our unneeded stuff and headed for the library. I rode on his back as we walked there so I would get used to it faster. It was fun. The sight from up here was so much different from when I walked, even though it was a meter or so of difference at most. The trees seemed smaller, I could see the top of people’s heads, and see over the crowds. It was pretty awesome, and Felix had been right about the physical closeness being nice.
Not having to walk was a fun bonus, too.
The library was much busier than the last time we’d been here. It made sense. Last time, the year-one students had still been settling in, but now they knew where to find everything and were much more comfortable actually going places. I knew I certainly was. I had to get off Felix to get in, though. The doors weren’t high enough here.
The first thing we did once we were inside was getting our next book. I followed Felix through the corridors. He knew exactly where we were going. Once we arrived, he picked two identical books off the shelves. He handed one to me and I read the title. Rivers. It didn’t have a blurb on the back, so I looked up at him inquisitively.
“What’s it about?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s about an otter-type beastkin realizing he’s gay, dealing with that, and falling in love with a fox-type beastkin. I liked it a lot and wanted you to read it as well. I also figured it might be a good read for you because of the topics it handles, like sex and getting comfortable with it. And after this morning, I figured it would be a good place to start.” He tilted his head. “Or did I guess wrong?”
I shook my head, glad that he remembered. I wasn’t sure I could ask for a recommendation a second time. “You didn’t.”
“So, uh, how much do you already know about the… topic? Depending on how much you already know, I can suggest a few books.”
I scratched my head. How much did I know? I’d never paid too much attention to my parents or ‘friends’ when they talked about sex. I’d picked up the basics, of course—dick goes in vagina. But men didn’t have vaginas—well, most men didn't, anyway—so that wasn’t an option. The only thing I could come up with was jerking the other off, a thought that sent shivers down my spine. Definitely one of excitement this time. I ignored it.
“I don’t really feel comfortable detailing everything I know, but I think it’s safe to assume I know pretty much nothing.”
Felix rubbed his snout, before telling me to wait here and walking off to grab some books. Having nothing better to do, I opened Rivers and started reading. The book opened with the otter beastkin swimming in a pool where he then meets the fox beastkin, and the way it was written immediately grabbed my interest. It was already much better than our current book.
I was reading about the two main characters going to the theater together when Felix returned with two books. He handed them to me and I read the titles. The first one was titled Scales in the night, and the other The basics of sex and puberty for all sexes and sexualities.
I raised an eye-ridge at him. “Really?”
He shrugged. “You said you didn’t know anything, so I figured that book might help a ton. It certainly helped me. I recommend you use it as a reference book while reading Scales in the night.”
“What’s that one about, then?”
“Oh, it’s a collection of gay short-stories about lizardkin. They start off as tame as you can get, with just kissing and cuddling and such, and get progressively spicier.”
That did sound like exactly what I wanted. I smiled at him. “Thanks. That sounds perfect. Almost suspiciously so, actually.”
He shrugged. “You're not the first gay lizardkin here.”
I nodded, that made sense. One of them must have had the same problems I had and written a book about it. Neat.
“Oh! That’s not all! I had something for you, let me just…” He searched his bags until he finally pulled out a plain envelope. He handed it to me. “Go on, open it.”
I glanced down at the envelope. Did my parents write me back? It was a little quick for it to be their response, but not impossible. Hope grew in my chest as I opened the envelope, but it was crushed when all it contained was a bookmark. It was a nice one. A really nice one. It was made of leather and had a pattern of scales pressed into it, and had all the colors of the rainbow. I liked it, but it wasn’t a letter.
“You don’t like it?” Felix's words shook me out of my trance. I looked up at him and he looked crushed. Fuck, now I made him feel bad, too.
“No, no, I do!” I quickly clarified. “It’s just… I saw the envelope and hoped for a moment that my parents had sent me a letter back. It doesn’t make sense that you would have it, but that didn’t stop me from hoping.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I remember now, you sent them a letter the first day we met, right?” I nodded. “I should’ve remembered that earlier and taken it out of the envelope.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. I can hardly expect you to remember something I said more than two weeks ago.”
“Still, I should’ve remembered.”
I just silently shook my head again. Wanting to change the topic, I asked. “I just want to say it again, but despite my reaction, I do really like it. Where did you get it?”
His face brightened, and he started explaining that he was walking through the shopping area when he saw it. “I saw it and immediately thought of you. You’ve been reading without one, and I’ve seen you struggling to remember the page you stopped on, so I figured you would like this. Before you ask, no, it hardly cost me anything, and no, you don’t owe me for it. It’s a gift.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. And yeah, I do need one,” I said with a chuckle. Remembering the page numbers had been a pain, and I wasn’t about to dogmark the page. “Why the rainbow colors, though?”
Felix looked away, scratching the scales behind his ears. Was he… embarrassed?
“Well, it looked cool. But I also figured rainbows are extremely rare in the Dry Territories, making them just like you, special and one of a kind.”
If I’d had skin instead of scales, I’m sure I would have blushed. I felt that same warm and fuzzy feeling I felt when we cuddled last weekend, and my heart hammered in my chest. It was amazing how he could make me feel this way with just a few words. This is what I imagined it should’ve felt like when Viggi called me cute.
…what would it have felt like if Felix had been the one to call me cute, instead?
It was hard to look Felix in the eyes, but I pushed through, and looked up. He was still looking slightly to the side, unable to meet my eyes, too. I didn’t feel like just words were enough to show my thanks, so I wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him a hug. “Thank you, Felix. I really appreciate the gift.”
We stayed like that for almost a full minute, and I did my best to ignore the rapid beating of Felix’s heart, which I could feel reverberating through me. It felt almost as loud as my own.