Ttaa 29) The House Guest

My sister sat down with me for dinner last night. It was what I call a kitchen floor sweeping salad, which was a little bit of everything leftover or soon to go bad thrown together. On top of lettuce.

Before she dug in she glanced up at me a few times, looking nervous.

I ignored her, focusing on my salad while making Mmm Mmm sounds rather than give her an opening to start talking about whatever it was that she felt unsure talking about.

She kicked me, then crossed her arms and glared.

Sighing, I gave in. “Whatever could it be that you wish to speak about my dear, sweet, gentle, sister?”

I twisted my legs aside this time.

She sighed. "Are you alright with someone staying with us for a while?"

Thinking it over, I guess I could crash on the couch for a bit since we didn’t have a guest room.

"Maybe more than a while…"

I blinked while she looked off to the side, looking a little upset for some reason.

“I guess we could set up a guest room downstairs…”

She glared. “They would be staying in my room.”

“But…” I was going to ask where she would sleep, but the dime finally dropped.

“Oh, does he… they, have a name.”

Imogne’s eyes went all shiny. "Alzara. She's an Arcanist."

Which I had to get her to explain since she had a few dozen different names for various sorts of magic. I for instance was a Bard, but she insisted that I was a Ritualist that just happened to use music as my medium.

She also refused to acknowledge the inherent sexiness of using music to do magic, but I let it go since she was my sister and it made her uncomfortable if I pushed that joke too far.

My sister who had a lover moving in with us.

Even if that was something that might bother me, I would get over it. I like having her here, and I think she needed to be around me, and her family. To have a home.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I would put up with what she called. "A multi-disciplined magical theorist."

So… Nerd. Magic nerd. Called it. But I was thinking it was someone who had started learning magic here on Earth or a returnee who had learned magic elsewhere that my sister had met through work.

Not from Earth.

But she wasn’t a returnee... or human.

Alzara was about a foot taller than my sister, built sort of lanky, and covered in gleaming dark yellow, or amber as the color chart Imo demanded I consult, and black scales.

She also had long flat tendrils in both darker and lighter colors in place of hair, and golden, metallic golden eyes, but with round pupils like a mammal.

Her chest was also pretty mammalian as well, so I don't know what's going on with that.

She was also nervous as hell, almost to the point of shaking as Imogene stood by her with her arm around the girl’s back and glared at me.

Well, she had made me promise to be good, but…

“Alzare. You’re acting so nervous you’re making me nervous. Sit down and I’ll get you some water.”

She sat. I got a glass of water and a salt shaker.

Sitting next to Imogene on the couch she seemed a little ashamed as the two of them whispered to eat others. I sat on the crate like chest on wheels we had as a coffee table and held out the water while holding up the salt shaker.

“It’s not a tradition in this part of the world, but it is the most symbolic one I've heard of. There are some people who live in the desert who offer water and salt to welcome guests to their home for three days and hold their duty as hosts as sacred.”

I handed her the glass of water and gestured for her to hold out her hand as I held up the shaker.

She let out a little laugh and let me sprinkle a dash of salt into her palm which she licked up with a flicker of her little pink forked tongue.

…so cute. When she got to know me well enough it wasn’t bullying I was going to have so much fun with her.

If fact, why wait?

"Did… Did you polish yourself to meet me today?"

You can't really blush with scales, but your eyes can go wide and you can stop breathing.

You can also have your girlfriend chase her brother around the room with a flying solid metal staff while she comforts you and yells, “You promised me you wouldn’t be a jerk!”

I yelled from where I had locked myself in the bathroom. The staff would have taken down my bedroom door, but its master needed the bathroom door. "I lied. I’m a guy, you know we do that.”

So Alzara has been one of a group of students in the girl's wing of a collage of magic who used a ritual she had slapped together to call for help as her school's defenses began to fail in the void between worlds.

Something had thrown her whole school there. She had no clue what.

Imogen sensed the call and answered. But she only had one real option as to where to take the four hundred survivors from the school.

Her workplace, which now had to find long term housing for over four hundred collage aged magic students of several dozen different races.

Whatever had cast the school into the void had completely severed any way for Imogen to track down their home world and return them.

So until she figured it out, they needed sponsors.

In a way, it's like the place trying to find adoptive parents for otherworld children, but instead of cute kids, it was mainly girls in their equivalent of their late teens or early twenties.

Collage Coed Monster Girls.

Sounds like an Anime, or at least a bad translation of one.

I stared blankly at my sister as that realization hit me, and I began to laugh.

Imo made me explain, then I showed her some links to the various manga and anime dealing with the trope.

She turned from my computer and gave me a look of horror. “I didn’t! We’re just trying…”

Then she smacked me on the shoulder and had to explain what we were on about to her mail order girlfriend who had wandered in from the living room to find out what was going on.

I had to go buy her a laptop of her own to get my computer back. Alzara liked to read and they didn't have the concept of comics back in her home world.

After getting Imogene on the phone I got some groceries too. We had an extra mouth to feed and I needed to find out if she had any dietary restrictions. Or if she needed live mice.

Lactose intolerant. Not even a race thing, just her. I got something called Sorbet after checking and finding out that Sherbert had dairy in it. I mean, why bother with Sherbert at all if it has dairy, just get real ice cream.