“That door leads to the basement, down there we have a small vault for valuables and a filled wine cellar.” Hilda points towards one of the doors in the main entry hall. “I won’t take you there because it is quite chilly.”
“Is that where Élise got the wine from?” Sam asks.
“Yep, looked like an expensive bottle too, but there’s still plenty of that left.”
I look at my girlfriend over Hilda’s shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked, but do you like wine, Sam? I’ve never seen you drink any?”
“Liking is a big word and I try not to drink any alcohol. If there’s nothing else to drink I wouldn’t mind a glass, but even then I’d still just prefer water.”
“Hmmm, I see I see.”
Hilda smiles and continues carrying me around. “You’ve already seen the bathroom and one of the lounges. And earlier on we’ve also passed the storage room, but that’s pretty much it for the ground floor. Well that door in the corner over there, that’s the washing room, to wash your clothes in and stuff like that. It’s pretty advanced actually. They have hot water there too.” She then leads us up the big staircase.”First door on the left is yet another lounge with a sizable library attached to it. There’s also the second bathroom next to it.” Hilda continues walking. “The next two doors are conference rooms, which we’ll never use so we might as well make it into something else. Maybe an armory for your sister or something like that. We should discuss it later.” Hilda then stops before the last door on this side. “And this last room is just a small office.”
Sam points to the other side of the landing. “And I suppose those are all the bedrooms then?”
“Yes, three of them actually. So a perfect fit for us and our party.” Hilda takes us to the other side. “The three bedrooms are practically identical to one another so I hope you don’t mind us having given you the middle one?”
“No, that should be fine.” Sam jogs a little to get out ahead of us. and pushes open the middle door to our bedroom. When we join her and I get a look into the bedroom, I’m surprised by how big it is. Even with the big wooden closet, the room is bigger than most modern bedrooms I’ve seen. And the bed itself looks like it comes out of a fairytale, with the typical sets of drapery tied up to the four bedposts.
“Want me to drop you off in your bed or do you want me to take you to the lounge?” Hilda asks and looks down at me.
“Well, we did say we were going to try to wait a bit so we don’t wake up in the middle of the night.” Sam replies in my stead. I give her a nod in agreement.
“Alright. Do you want to see the new lounge so you can read a book? Or cuddle up, I don’t judge.” She gives us a wink.
“Yeah, let’s do that.” Sam chuckles. I just blush instead.
We go back to where we came from and enter the upstairs lounge. The fireplace is crackling along nicely when we enter, giving a pleasant glow on the lounging sofas next to it.
“I’ll go look for a book to read to Ami, could you put her on the sofa for me, Hilda?”
“Of course.” Hilda nods at my girlfriend and carries me over to one of the sofas. She softly lowers me down into one of them. “There you go.”
“Thanks, Hilda.” I give her a big hug before I let go of her completely.
“No problem.” She leans into the hug and after I’m done heads over to one of the several big bookcases as well.
Sam comes back, five minutes later, with a relatively small book and proceeds to sit down next to me. Putting her book aside for a second so she can maneuver me so I can use her lap as a lap pillow. She reaches down to give me a kiss before she takes back her book.
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“I wouldn’t mind kissing a bit longer.” I tease her a little.
“I know, but I guess you’ll have to wait until we are actually going to go to bed.” She winks back at me after handily turning that situation around.
“Buuu.” I pout but then quickly smile again as my lovely girlfriend flips open the book. “What’s the book about?” Her hand is in front of the title so I can’t even read that.
“I’m not sure, but I looked through a couple of the pages and it looks to be a fictional story. Most of that library is full with informational books but I want you to stay awake and not fall asleep instead.”
“Good point…”
“Hey, informational books can be exciting too!” Hilda calls out from behind us, she’s still looking through the bookcases.
“As much as early morning lessons at uni can be interesting, the chance you fall asleep is still pretty darn high.” Sam replies back.
“How would that be different for early morning movies?”
“...” Sam scratches her cheek for a second. “Uh… I guess you’ve got a point there…”
Hilda chuckles. “Well, but I definitely would rather have someone read a fictional book to me than a scientific one, so I do know what you mean. I was just being a bit pedantic. Unless it’s that one famous historian from tv, because that guy is just incredibly fascinating to listen to… this one time he-” Hilda starts explaining this one historical theory about a certain war during the Medieval Era. Sam and I look at each other and start giggling at her enthusiasm.
Hilda finishes her talk about the tv-historian just when my sister and Nikki enter the room too. My sister seems a lot more exhausted than earlier and comes in while rubbing her neck. Nikki on the other hand seems like she’s incredibly happy.
“Oh Goddess.” Lise slumps down in one of the armchairs.
“Nikki went a bit overboard?” Hilda chuckles.
“You can definitely say that…” My sister blows out.
“Sorry, it has been a while.” Nikki absolutely didn’t look any kind of sorry about what she’d done to my sister.
“I might actually just fall asleep in this chair…” Lise stretches and then looks at Sam and I on the sofa. “I see you two are in a dangerous position as well.”
“I’ll keep her awake, don’t you worry about that.” Sam smirks.
“Hmm. I guess I’ll take a book as well…” My sister tries to get out of the armchair again but she plomps down the second she tries. “Uh, well, Hilda, could you toss me a book I might like?”
“I’ll try.” Hilda replies with a smile and heads back over to the bookcase. Nikki happily joins her.
Sam finally finds the opportunity to start reading the book to me although both of us soon realize that it’s not for us. It’s some kind of absurdly written piece of text that reminded me a bit of a lesson I once had about a writing style where you just put everything that comes to mind down on paper. So in the end we just end up cuddling on the sofa while trying to keep each other awake. The fact that we are both purring is definitely not helping.
My sister, however, apparently has had more success in trying to find something that interests her as she’s looking quite attentively at the pages in her book. That is until she looks up at the both of us with a questioning look on her face.
“Uh, what’s wrong, sis?” I ask.
“Hmm. I was just wondering.” She closes her book but keeps her index in between the pages so she doesn’t lose where she’s at. “Couldn’t you heal people to make them lose their exhaustion? You had a passive ability like that too, didn’t you?”
“Oh, that’s true, I do.” I give her a nod.
“But it probably doesn’t work when she’s exhausted.” Hilda quickly replies. “I don’t want to know how much mana she spent in that battle but I’m pretty sure that if she’d spent much more that her body would definitely not have liked that. She’s already not that mobile anymore.”
“Yeah, don’t overexert yourself, Ami.” Sam smiles and runs her hand through my hair.
“I won’t.” I smile back.
“In any case, Ami will probably be back to normal after resting a bit.” Hilda nods.
“Hey, what would happen if we get attacked if Ami runs out of mana?” Nikki poses a question.
“She told us about her foray into Osvik, didn’t she?” Hilda replies. “She says she suddenly got a burst of energy after she changed into her angel of vengeance form.”
“But doesn’t that just mean that her body had kept that in reserve, just in case?”
“I guess that’s possible… but with Ami it’s hard to tell. She kind of falls out of the realm of normal, even in this absurd world. No offense of course.”
“None taken.” I smile.
“So, in short… the answer is, Ami is Ami and Ami is unfathomable?” My sister states.
“Yeah, I think you could say that.”
Sam chuckles. “Well, at least the unfathomable Ami is mine.”
“Hey, leave a bit for us as well.” My sister protests with a laugh.
“I’ll have to think about that.” Sam replies with another laugh.
I just look on happily as my family jokes with each other.
-These are good times.-