I thanked the Goddess, and Emma, for the veritable bounty of extraordinary meat that I managed to eat this evening. It was just exquisite, and the lack of hunger from my vampireness really didn’t stop me from enjoying this all to the fullest.

From the faces of my friends and family, I could see they all thought about this meal the same as I did.

That said, after we had eaten our bellies full, and ‘full’ for me, we still had a lot of meat left as we had predicted. So it was time to put the rest away back in the fridge so we could enjoy more of the food tomorrow. It was after we had put away the food and cleaned up the table from dinner that we sat relaxing in the living room once more. It was getting pretty close to midnight right about now, with the snow still falling down as hard as it was before.

“Could you please excuse me. Where is the bathroom?” Anya asked, shyly raising her hand.

“Ah! I’ll show you!” Ria hopped up from the sofa. “It’s just this way.”

“Thank you.” Anya replied with a shy smile.

As Anya and Ria disappeared, Em leaned in close to Claire. “Hey Claire, something's been on my mind.” She said in a low voice. “Does Anya know about Auro’s condition?”

Claire shook her head. “Of course she doesn’t. I wouldn’t take your agency away. Especially not on matters like these. I was made to understand not to divulge it on my own accord.” She looked directly at me when saying that.

“Thanks.” I smiled. “I mean, I wouldn’t have minded too much since you are one of my best friends. But you are right, it’s something I should probably tell her myself.”

“If I can return a question.” Claire continued.

“Mhmm, go ahead.” I nodded.

“Do you plan on telling her? Not that you have to, of course.”

“Hmmm.” I leant back in the sofa and scratched my cheek. “Honestly, I don't know. She is a dear friend of mine, but I wouldn’t call her as close as you are, or Karin, or Prez for that matter… And I’ve not even told her yet.”

“Auro…” Em looked a bit weird at me.

“I didn’t mean no offense. I was just being straight.” As straight as I can be, at least.

“I totally understand.” Claire chuckled. “I know you all don’t see Anya nearly as much as I do, it’s only natural that you see her more as an indirect friend, so to speak.”

“That said… Do you plan to stay with Anya?”

“Auro?” Em now looked at me like I had asked something completely absurd.

To which Claire just laughed out loud. “Yeah, I do. You know I’m a romantic. For me, there is no point in starting a relationship if I don’t plan to go for the long haul. And Anya is very much the same in that regard. You can ask her if you want, but she’s going to parrot every word I just said.”

“Yeah, I think you two are very much like Em, Ria and I in that regard.”

“Why does it matter?” Em asked.

“I just wanted to know whether it’s worth including her, and if they are going to stay together, it would be very hard to keep things on the wraps, right?”

“I guess if you look at it like that…” Em seemed a bit displeased, though.

“You don’t agree?”

“I think you should tell her because you trust and like Anya herself, not because of Claire’s involvement. I think that shows a lot more respect towards her, otherwise you just treat her as being second to Claire, and that doesn’t sit well with me.”

I crossed my arms and leaned back on the sofa. Claire looked at me, tilting her head just a tad.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“That’s just my opinion.” Em continued.

I shook my head, still with my arms crossed. “No, you are right, Em. If someone would tell me a secret, I’d want them to tell it to me because they trust me, not because they trust someone I’m close to.”

“What are you talking about? Is it serious?” Ria poked her head around the corner as she was followed by Anya behind her.

I uncrossed my arms and looked back over the back of the sofa at my girlfriend, giving them both a smile. “Just discussing the weather.”

“It really doesn’t seem to end, does it?” Anya shook her head and walked over back to us so she could sit down. Ria did the same.

“Anya and I came up with an idea to spend the time.” Ria said happily as she leaned up against me.

“Oh, and what may that be?” I leaned my head against hers.

“We kinda wanted to have a typical girl’s night activity.”

“Oh boi.” I sucked air in between my teeth.

Claire started laughing. “Ah, you are regretting what you asked now, don’t you?”

“What kind of girl’s night activities?” Em asked, the unfortunate soul.

Ria and Anya looked at each other and smiled. “Make-up, manicures and pedicures, of course.” They said together.

“Yeah, I think I’m going for a walk in the deep snow.” I tried to get up, but Ria quickly wrapped herself around me. She put her hand on my arm and tugged the sleeve of my hoodie.

“Pretty pretty please, Rora? Pleaaaase?” She put on her world famous puppy dog eyes.

It was super effective.

“She got her in the weak spot.” I heard Em whisper to Claire, both of them chuckling profusely. Honestly, I had expected some more resistance from Em too.

I puffed my cheeks. “Alright then…”

“Yay!” She smiled so brightly I almost needed to get my sunglasses, and then proceeded to give me a very big hug.

“Only this once, though.”

“Or until she uses her little trick again…” It was Claire whispering to Em this time. And she wasn’t wrong. In front of Ria my resolve often buckles like a house of cards in the middle of a hurricane. Resistance is utterly futile, but that didn’t mean I was going to stop trying.

“Alright.” I plucked Ria from my arm and stood up, not to flee outside, mind you. “If you wanna do that, then we should cozy up the place even more, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes!” Ria exclaimed enthusiastically.

“I think I have a couple of nice thick blankets upstairs stuffed in a closet or something. I’ll go and grab those.” I looked over to Em. “Could you come with me to grab some pillows as well?”

Em smiled, gave me a nod and then stood up. “I can.”

“Claire, I’m counting on you to keep our girlfriend and Anya in check.”

Anya replied before Claire could. “We will be busy enough making our own preparations.” She smirked.

Claire playfully saluted me anyway. “I will try the best I can.”

With a smile, I rolled my eyes and walked towards the staircase so we could head towards the attic. Em shortly behind me.

The attic was a bit cold, so it was best to quickly gather what we needed to head down again.

Em opened up one of the closets where we had stored the surplus of pillows, while I started taking the fluffy blankets out of the other closet. It reminded me that we still needed to make sure the guest room was completely done, but I was pretty sure the only thing we really needed to do was put on another blanket against the cold.

“Any reason why you asked me to come and help?” Em prodded with a smile as she closed her closet back up again. She had amassed quite a pile of pillows.

“I wanted to confront you about your betrayal.” I replied jokingly.

“What betrayal?” She smirked. “I just didn’t really mind what Ria and Anya proposed, that’s all. Maybe you’ll like it, who knows?”

“I don’t know… it doesn’t really sound like my thing and whenever I needed to put on make-up I’ve never really liked it.”

“But it’s Ria who’s going to pamper you, you know that, right? I can easily imagine her being an expert at these kinds of things. She’s going to be incredibly soft with you, and with me for that matter.”

“I guess so. I suppose I don’t really mind if it’s Ria…” I picked up the blankets. “Have you ever done something like this before, by the way? It sounded like you have, but must’ve been with a different friend group then.”

Em shook her head while she picked up the pillows. “Kinda. I did it a while ago with my mom and my sister. It was my mom who asked.”

“Wanted to have some bonding time with her daughters?”

“Pretty much.” Em nodded. ”Dad was gone for work as usual. Mom thought it was the best time to have some time with us.”

“Was it fun?”

She nodded again. “It was, mom really knows how to work make-up and stuff too. Everything that I’ve learned I’ve learned from her, after all. And it was pretty nice to have some physical bonding with her too. It’s a great mother-daughter activity if you like it.”

“I damn sure hope that Alessia doesn’t want those kinds of bonding activities, though.”

“I’m pretty sure she knows you well enough that you are not really that kind of girl, Auro.” Em chuckled.

-Though she has already managed to get me into heels…..-