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Alright. I'm not all that much of a writer, but I recently read a bit of helpful advice that finally encouraged me to actually put up some of my odd little stories I typed. This is one that I had a bit of fun writing, so thank you if you decided to take a look.

Feel free to comment. All responses are welcome. ^_^

One Step Forward

It was the usual Thursday night. She had been walking home after a long shift, ready to work in a shower and fall into the blissful embrace of her bed. Of course, living with her sister and her husband usually threw those plans out the window, but Flare liked to pretend it was possible on her way home. The crimson kobold paused at her door and dug for her keys for a moment, a bit surprised that the usual buzz of music wasn't blaring from her house. A small smile blossomed on her face as she fished for her keys as she felt her chances for a quiet night soar from their usual near nonexistent odds. The door swung open and those chances plummeted back down to zero.

"SURPRISE! HAPPY HATCHDAY FLARE!"

Her sister's shrill voice rang out loudly through the peaceful night along with several other marginally less grating voices as Flare felt her jaw slacken. One would later ask if she was surprised, to which she would answer yes as she didn't know that her sister even knew when her hatch day was, but that wasn't the reason for her slack jawed expression on this particular occasion. The gleaming red kobold's eye twitched briefly before she turned her head up and away deliberately, just in time for the golden yellow mass of scales that made up her sister to slam her bare body into a bone gripping embrace with what was the ONLY clothed kobold in the room.

Flare was reasonably sure that Thani was rambling in her ear as she usually did, but couldn't bring herself to respond or risk turning her gaze away from the patch of ceiling that she had decided to fixate upon. She really should have expected something like this today. No one at work really cared about their coworker's hatch days and her few close friends had even swung by during her lunch hour to eat. That was more than enough for Flare but it seemed that Thani had other ideas.

Now normally this would have been a sweet sisterly gesture if not for but one simple fact. Thani hadn't just decided to throw her a surprise party. Thani had decided to throw a revel. While she had never been to one herself, Thani's inane pestering to try and get her to attend one had left her with an intimate understanding of their nature. As Flare understood it, it was a party where sex, debauchery, and lord knows what else was permitted, hence why she was averting her eyes. She had seen enough of her brother in laws package in the brief time the pair had been living with her that she did NOT need to see it from their friends. Flare blinked once and deliberately forced herself to stop shaking as she tried to listen to Thani, catching only the tail end of her golden sister's statement.

"-and everything! So? What do you think!?"

Flare blinked once more and did what she always did, grinned and bore it. The red kobold turned her head down to smile at her younger golden sister's shining gaze and then, taking a deep breath to steady herself, out at her 'guests', electing to focus her eyes on the tall lamp standing silently on the other side of the room.

"Well it's... certainly a surprise. Thank you. Everyone. Really, but you didn't-"

"OF COURSE WE DID! It's your hatch day Flare. I'm not letting you waste all of it working! Now let's get this party started! JOHN! Hit it!"

Flare didn't need to look to know that her brother-in-law was grinning beside the sound system and instantly raised her hands to the side of her head to muffle what was to come. Even then, she had to wince as the pounding music erupted from the speakers and flooded her house and what was likely half the neighborhood. She took some measure of amusement out of the pained expressions she caught in her peripheral vision at least as John was notorious for playing music far louder than was strictly necessary. Luckily her sister was quite good at distracting him and appeared at his side in an instant.

Knowing that Thani would completely forget about her in about fifteen minutes, Flare made a casual excuse about going to get food and slipped away into the kitchen, nearly tripping on a tail or two but at least making it without moving her eyes from the ceiling. The kitchen was thankfully closed off from the rest of the house with no windows and only a single door to its name. She only wished it had a lock. A soft sigh slipped from her muzzle as she leaned back against the wall beside the refrigerator; allowing her nervous shivers to return and to clench her teeth.

Her dreams of a peaceful night had been quite thoroughly shattered, but she couldn't precisely be upset about it. Thani had remembered what day her elder sister had hatched this year and tried to do something for her. She simply didn't understand her crimson sibling and failed to notice her discomfort in the thrill of the party. Shaking her head, Flare glanced around the kitchen in search of something to occupy her time. She figured that everyone would likely clear out around midnight. Another heavy sigh escaped her as she slipped forward to do the dishes that had been left undone since that morning, take out the trash, and maybe rewash the dishes a few times afterwards. Thani may forget about her in fifteen minutes but the stairs that could take her to her bedroom were through the throng of bare bodies in the other room. Heaving another sigh as she ran the faucet, Flare glanced up at the clock. It was nine thirty, only two and a half hours to go at best.

It was now ten thirty, a full hour since the revel that marked the day of her hatching had begun and since then Flare had done the dishes, taken out the trash, redone the dishes, reorganized the pantry and was currently working on polishing the silverware while glaring at the clock. After the first half hour, the sounds of music and chatter had lessened into the background, someone thankfully wrestling control of the sound system from a no doubt occupied John, and other more awkward sounds were flowing through the door. The noises flared noticeably and Flare swiftly dropped her spoon to the counter and smiled towards the door, cursing everything that she could think of as Thani was clearly not quite as forgetful that night as she should have been.

"Hi Thani. Fun party, I was just-"

Flare began to ramble off cheerfully, only to pause as she realized who she was talking too. The kobold standing at the door, holding it halfway ajar and quirking a brow at her was not golden like her sister. She blinked once or twice as though to clear her thoughts or clear them, but the kobold's scales did not shift from the healthy cyan color to the gold she was expecting. She could feel the heat rushing to her face as the sides of the kobold's mouth tilted upwards in a small sly little smile as she realized she was staring at a very familiar and very naked kobold.

"So this is where you ran off too huh? Are you okay?"

He questioned, breaking the silence and Flare's stunned stupor enough for her to turn away from him. Flare nodded sharply, not quite trusting herself to speak and mentally thanking her father for gifting her his gleaming red coloration. She returned to polishing her spoon briefly, trying to ignore the eyes burning into her back or the soft padding of his feet against the tile floor as he moved closer. Her stance was stiff and her eyes wandered towards the nearby backdoor, wondering if it would be considered insulting to run out it and apologize later, preferably when he was clothed. Mercifully, the cyan kobold's footsteps stopped and she risked a glance behind her to see he was staring at her with some measure of concern from where he had elected to lean on the table.

She heaved an unconscious sigh of relief and relaxed a bit, still embarrassed, but not as nervously afraid as she had been a few moments before. Laws and rules regarding appropriate dress were vague at best and most kobolds could care less about seeing one another bare; Flare was not most kobolds. To her it had always seemed terribly intimate to run around or even talk to someone without some form of covering. She had avoided it at first, merely steering clear and averting her attention away from those few whom she had met that wore questionable attire, or none at all. But as time passed and she grew older, the discomfort that had always been there seemed to grow into something different. That oddity had grown as she had, turning into a discomfort of being disrobed even in her own home and finally culminating into what it was now. Her aversion had turned into a fear. She didn't know when it had happened but at some point Flare had gone from polite avoidance to actively inconveniencing herself to avoid any amount of bare scales.

She had moved out of her small hometown and moved to the city in the hopes of escaping them with the more stringent policies instated in bigger towns and had managed to find some semblance of comfort therein. Then Thani had come to her for help after their father had passed away. She had sold the old house and needed somewhere to stay and Flare couldn't find it in her to refuse. Then all hell broke loose. Thani didn't understand her sister and never quite had. She had quite frequently brought home suspicious bedfellows that Flare would later find drinking coffee in her kitchen, reeking of sex and bare as the day they had hatched. The first time she had run back to her room, called in sick and hyperventilated in her closet. The second time. She got dressed for work first and ran out of the house.

Thani was oblivious and Flare couldn't kick out the only close family she had left. So the crimson female had endured and Flare was actually quite thankful to her sister. In the years they had been living together, Flare had overcome her fears to an extent. She no longer started panicking when Thani grabbed her or wandered the house naked with her husband. She even managed to make herself look every now and again. It was oddly therapeutic to have her sibling with her. But sitting in the kitchen alone with a naked male with a revel in the other room; this was not a test she felt particularly ready for.

'You sure? You look a little shaky."

The male's voice was tinted with something close to genuine concern and Flare had to admit that she was acting odd. Her voice came out a bit higher than normal at first but she managed to control it enough to respond.

"Yeah. I'm fine. You're... You're Alex right? I've seen you around the neighborhood before."

Flare replied, choosing not to mention that she had always seen him clothed. They weren't close by any means, but he was usually out doing some form of yard work when she left for work and had always been cordial. Now she wasn't sure she would be able to look at him the same way again.

"Yeah and you're Flare. Now that the reintroduction are finished, why don't you tell me why you're holed up in the kitchen? It's your party right?"

Flare gave a small wince and shook her head a bit, tilting it just right so she could shoot a smile at him without actually looking over her shoulder.

"I guess. Thani planned the whole thing... I... didn't actually find out about it until tonight."

The red kobold explained with a small chuckle before turning back to her spoon. It had long since been polished but she had lain out the rest of the silverware on the other counter past the table. It couldn't hurt to be too clean though.

"So uhm... Thani invited you? I didn't know you two had met."

Flare noted a bit nervously into the silence. In spite of the awkward tone of the conversation, she was actually quite glad to finally have someone to talk to, and wasn't quite ready to have him leave yet as long as he kept a nice safe distance.

"Yeah. She sent out invitations to just about everyone in the neighborhood. I wasn't really planning to come with my cousin visiting, but he found the invitation and decided we should show up. Thani said it was okay but... something tells me this isn't really your thing."

Alex explained casually as he stared at the back of the female kobold's formal looking black attire. His brow was still furrowed as he puzzled over the female's odd idea of fun. While revels were known for their loose moral standards, nothing said that one HAD to participate in anything sexual. He himself had spent the past hour talking with another neighbor over punch. He had only slipped into the kitchen to find some ice. Judging from the sounds outside, he figured that they had forgotten about it just as they had forgotten about the female in front of him.

Flare paused for a moment swallowing the automatic response to defend her sibling. She shook her head slightly and gave a soft sigh as she finally managed a more honest reply.

"No... Not really. Thani means well but she has her own ideas of fun that she thinks everyone share's. But everyone was already here and everything was set up so I couldn't just tell her that. She remembered this year at least... Last year she baked me a cake a week later when she realized she had missed my birthday for another party John invited her to."

Flare realized it wasn't that funny, but she couldn't help but chuckle at the memory. Thani had felt terrible that it was all she had done, that she had done it late, and promised to make up for it the next year. Her sibling was notorious about forgetting important dates and hadn't been on time for a birthday since she was sixteen. Her sister always tried to make up for it in some small way later, and the sweet gestures and apology on the wrong day was right at Flare's preferred speed. It was a humorous contrast to what was happening this year and made her hope that Thani would willfully forget again next year.

"Huh... Well... As long as she's trying right?"

Alex noted as he pushed away from the table with a small smile. He still found it a bit odd that the woman of the hour was hiding away in the kitchen polishing silverware, which he noticed she had been polishing the same spoon since he had arrived. He didn't question it though as they weren't exactly close enough for that and how she spent her hatch day was ultimately her decision.

"So. They sent me in here for ice... do you happen to-"

He began, only to blink as Flare deliberately pointed her spoon towards the fridge beside the door. He blinked once and turned around to open the fridge, smiling at the bag of ice therein and turning to thank her. He paused briefly as he realized she had returned to polishing and purposefully ignoring him. A small frown crossed his muzzle, but he took the ice and turned to make his way towards the door.

"Thanks! I'll see you around."

He called as he pushed through the doorway and back into the throng of meeting bodies and casual conversation that was spread out through the main room. The ice was swiftly taken off his hands as he considered the odd encounter in the kitchen. He couldn't shake the feeling that he should have tried a bit harder to get Flare involved, but finally brushed away the thoughts of the encounter and slipped off to find his cousin in the mess of bodies.

Flare waited until the door had clicked shut and dropped her head to the counter in front of her. Her heart was still racing in her chest, but she couldn't keep the grin off of her face as she lifted her head and tossed the stupid spoon in the sink. Her eyes glanced over the clock once more as she moved to sit at the table Alex had abandoned. She had been nervous, borderline terrified, but that didn't matter. All that mattered to her was that the moment the male had opened the door to leave, she had taken the chance. Her head had turned and her eyes had shifted, and she had caught a glimpse of cyan backside just before he made it through the door.

She still wasn't going to leave the kitchen until everyone was gone. She still would have preferred Thani's week late cake. She was still never going to attend any of her sister's parties. But it had been a good hatch day. She had reached another small milestone in her self-imposed quest to conquer her phobia. She had looked at a virtual stranger without having to force herself. She had been curious and for the first time she had given into temptation. Oh it was a small victory to be sure, but small steps were the key to overcoming anything.