Chapter 579: Chapter 579 - Oh, It’s Just Another Restrained, Prepossessing Morning At The Thirsty Goltbred Guest Wing~

Sleeping so unrestrained against Qatrand had been the closest thing to drowning in a deep, boldly felt ’contentment’ that Elua had ever voluntarily submitted herself to. Bare limbs, torsos, and spirits tangled together... she did not remember even deciding to fall asleep. One moment she was syncing her heartbeat with that of her beloved, the next a hand was stroking her neck as light filtered into the guest wing bedroom. A choice made because sleeping so naked and *adult* like they were now, but in the room she grew up in, just didn’t feel right!

"Hello again, my wife." 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Pigeon blues were already waiting for those darling mint of her spouse’s to open. As the blonde had awakened fifteen minutes before that and sat upright, she even got to see the bit of waking confusion mingle with the awareness and embarrassment of her unrefined resting habits. A sight which felt like a longed for miracle made real... and caused a strong set of abdominals to crease as a calloused hand slid along the brunette’s ribs.

And tugged up at the heiress’s lower back - for the swordswoman desired to kiss the woman she loved, flecks of spittle dried on her lips or not. Elua felt the desire as their lips met and compared it back with her own, ignoring the little part of her that was still unsure she deserved being cherished this way... no matter what had been promised. After all, it hardly mattered what almost anyone (including herself) said she deserved.

’Qat, Qat, Qat~’

It only mattered what her husband-wife believed. Or told her to believe. While it might not prevent all schemes and revenge forever, the ancient-minded cultivator was even willing to temporarily let bygones be who-cares-a-gone regarding the Yecine family. Should the woman holding her tight, and casually groping her just a little more than expected, simply say the words out loud. That they didn’t matter to her anymore - and that El should not be involved with their future.

"Navuill is here, El."

"Mm. I feel that."

"...You mean his presence, right? You can let go of my wrist now."

"Boo... so you can touch me suddenly, but I can’t make you keep doing it just as suddenly?"

"I’d like to get up because I’m thirsty. And before you-"

Faster than her next words, the quick-thinking heiress stretched herself out while pulling her feet in. Exhaling with her knees high, the woman sunk in her belly button to her spine - engaging her transversus abdominis and leaving a bowl of skin from the costal margin to hip bones. All while she smugly spun up the moisture in the air using her Gaseous Element and allowed almost a whole cup of dew-point cold water to settle in the... literally Elua shaped stomach basin.

Even if it brought a bit of a sudden heat flash to the room as many percentage points of relative humidity were condensed for her private party trick. Intimacy was worth changing the local room’s weather!

"Before I what?"

"It’s disorienting. When you don’t also pretend to move your lips."

Elua couldn’t *really* speak or move at all, not without loosing the current contraction of her muscles. Allowing this liquid to spill over the sides of her flesh wasn’t exactly the way she would have *liked* to wet any bedding this morning, or any time of day. While the water was as clean as could be managed - literally twisted at speeds that flung contaminant particulates out of the vapor - it would still be a waste.

However, the illusionist was more than capable of using her Aspect to hijack the auditory senses for a bit of mimicked Telepathy. Projecting her voice into her beloved’s mind to keep up the banter while allowing her body to keep up the hard work of being very, very still.

"That would require me to fake myself more to you, darling. I refuse. Besides, this is even more intimate, no?"

"No. You sound different."

"I most certainly do not - my exophasic representation is perfect! That’s just a cognitive dissonance you feel, caused by the fact that I’m pretending to whisper beside your ear... instead of aligning it from down here, where I physically am."

Squinting in mock anger, the reincarnator could easily recall all the problems that using her *own* perceived quality of voice created for early-life Uvraneht. Bone conduction of what sound vibrates out of vocal cords amplifies the bassier parts to yourself, making one’s own voice often seem richer and fuller than it came across to others. Eventually she started to always use a false illusory voice, one that she could perfectly imitate at all times, until encountering a Sound cultivator that helped her fully re-align to her real voice.

’Only to go back to rarely speaking in reality again... because I was always hiding my actual location.’

There was also stretch of time when she practiced altering target’s voice to seem like their own endophasia - the imaginary voice that people talked to themselves with. Ultimately she gave up, as while it was *often* quite close to what a person heard when they spoke out loud, it was rarely exact enough for her to rely on. Especially when there were so many other manipulative methods to make use of, to get what she wanted out of interactions.

"I see."

But while her wife was thinking of her own technical craft, all Qat really saw was a woman with water pooling on her concaved stomach. That she was sure the brunette expected her to drink from - or vocally deny her that satisfaction in some wry way that would make the ’prank’ worth it. Smiling, the blonde split the difference by poking down and tracing her fingers along the bottom of the ’bowl’ before bringing them back up. With water that followed along like it had a mind of its own.

"I guess that explains the feeling. And I guess you made this before I finished telling you not to."

Pulled to a set of digits by a combination of Adhesion and Gravity techniques, the cultivator carefully sipped at the half a cup that dragged along... while raising an eyebrow at her successfully one-upped mintdrop. While the former Yecine was thinking about competing playfully this way, the current Goltbred eldest daughter was only considering how - whether with this method or that one - her life partner and intended life lover was incredibly sexy in the morning!

’Then again, it’s probably just the lack of our clothes. Or the wonderful kiss. Or the exciting squeeze of my bre-’

"Elua!"

A young girl’s excited voice interrupted the lustful thought and, without finishing it or wasting a single second, the Ogre was rapidly upon the door. Not to welcome her little sister who was all but skipping straight for the entrance... but to *lock* it now, as neither of them had ever done last night! In her panicked possessiveness that bred such an eager haste, the latch tore from the wood and forced her to simply slam her forearm over the door and its frame.

"What was that?!"

"Safe..."

Taking a breath, right as little fingers tried turning a handle and pushing at whatever blocked the way to greeting her dear sister-in-law and far dearer sister, a pair of mint eyes skipped over to a mirror. One that happened to be angled to show the sight she just *protected*. Her Qat’s impressive muscular form - without shirt, without pants, without anything but the long blonde hair running down a strong back...

"Are you okay? Are the two of you *still* asleep? But Qat said she usually gets up before dawn!"

...That view she saw, whether reflected or not, was El’s alone. She would share all her other knowledge with her sister, at the appropriate times for her growth except when it was ethically permissible to omit. The brown haired woman would even share time and affection from her spouse that could otherwise be aimed at herself, rather than little Onya. However, the reincarnator had buried lines that even her second most valued person could not cross.

And those lines certainly looked a lot like the toned cut of muscles that traveled down to an area exclusively for the married couple, being unhurriedly covered by undergarments as El stared so much that it drew a stoic head tilt from the swordswoman. As well as a whispered question that pretended to miss the point.

"Do you want me to hold the door instead, as you put something on first?"

"No. And Qatrand?"

"Elua? Was that your voice? So you *are* awake! Can I come in?"

It was not as if her whole first name was never used, but when it came with a spiritual ’tone’ like that, the swordswoman could not pretend anymore. That she hadn’t felt a chill more piercing than the Frozen Duskblade’s Frost lining. Or that it grew even more jagged when an excited knock on the door began. Practically polar at the final words from Onya.

"...Yes, Elua?"

Intentional peek or lucky accident, the heiress didn’t want to find out if she was capable of forgiving and forgetting an incident that would only amount to the curious innocence of her reddish-blond haired sibling. Maturity was a good thing, but if thousands of years of prior life hadn’t adjusted some deep parts of her... it didn’t matter if she felt like she had ’grown’ in this life. Because she always felt like she was a step away from reverting to the sort of person that accomplished her own deepest mistakes.

"What would you think of my carving a ritual into your very bones that will make others see a more blurred illusion of you, so long as you mentally identify as being naked?"

"Honestly?"

Glowing mint eyes tilted up, meeting the person before her and trying to ignore the imagined screams of terrified future citizens of a territory that she suddenly foresaw fleeing from her possessive wrath. For she suddenly remembered that there was a public bath in the Warden Patrician’s settlement... and while there had been no letters detailing her attendance, El was oddly sure of something.

That with Qatrand gil Yecine’s gender revealed, accepted, and now no longer a heavy pressing point dangling over her life - the swordswoman probably wouldn’t care about hiding her body! In the first place, the suits were always a preferred fashion choice, not a full-on rejection of her body’s natural form. Pigeon blues always shook a lot more from *seeing* than being seen.

"Please. I’m all for honesty between us. Tell me what you think."

"It sounds like something your mother would want for your father."

"That it does."

"Is it something you need to feel secure and safe?"

Arm sliding down and away from the door, because the swordswoman had finished getting all of her important clothes on, the brunette looked away and mumbled something. A heartbeat later, the relatively petite wife’s space was fully invaded and a calloused hand also prevented the door from opening. Even though it meant the barrier pushed in about a half inch rebounded slightly on the poor little girl, who thought she was finally being let in!

"Ow! What’s the matter!? Is this because of all the pranks I played while you were gone?!"

"Sorry. What did you say, El?"

Flushing all over, the brunette woman couldn’t ignore things the same way that the blonde had been doing. The intense ’wrath’ and obsessive, possessive love that had radiated in the cloud of that ancient spiritual pressure... that had blazed like the brightest of green-with-’jealousy’ stars inside the fragment of her precious mintdrop. When something *instinctual* and more than half as scintillating as her own feelings appeared, in the once stolen chunk of energy inside her chest-

"...No. I’ll be good."

Elua er Goltbred’s impulses had never felt more restrained. All because, for the first time in both lives, her partner was apparently happy to be just as intensely petty in *that* particular way. Even if she was sure that a portion of it would fade, especially after Qatrand’s headspace was no longer entirely wrapped up in the first-time experience they’d shared only just yesterday.

"Nn-nn...ARGH! Something is weird! I’m telling mom!"

"So she says. You should get dressed too. Before anyone can see you. Unblurred."

Lifting up her chin, she took another kiss without any ounce of embarrassment over the reality of what she’d just done, by forcefully blocking the young girl’s entry. With tendrils of her spirit continuing to pin her lover to the door, the tall and muscular cultivator stepped slowly back from the more petite but far stronger one. Even as she kneeled, looking completely stoic and chivalrous, the Hero of the Last Descent had a little *edge* to her Intent with pigeon blues watching the little war developing.

"Something easy to wear is fine."

Between listening to the words clearly spoken... and the bullying spirit behind them, which was clearly making it hard for the heiress to do anything but grow goosebumps and shiver in place with her back along the polished wood of her family’s guestroom door. The reincarnator was reminded all over again, just like on waking, how she felt this much ’safety’ with her precious gem - and this much *cherishment*.

A kind of love that overflowed even the highly desirous expectations of a woman who thought she had been *quite* infatuated numerous other times. The kind of stupid-couple behavior that made a set of spiritual fragments shiver, with the first inklings of unique experience. Like all proto-children seeking to differentiate themselves from their constituent parts were bound to do at some point.

’Hnng~ If her love’s intensity alone could impregnate me, I’d be carrying six - seven? - kids right now!’

Something rather close... to cringing and turning away, from what the main spirits they were once part of were doing and thinking.