FSE

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Author's Notes

So yeah, been a bit of time since i last posted. Honestly, I've been afraid that SoFurry would mangle it. The good news is that the formatting seems to be working okay on new stories. Sadly, editing older stories ends up with a mess. *Sigh* Ahh well.

Anyway, the Mirror, Mirror... universe continues! I realized I really should warn people in advance (with apologies to people who have gotten invested in the universe): This story series will contain M/F, M/M, M/F/F, M/M/F, F/F, M/M/M/M/F/F/F/F, and maybe some H as well. Eventually, just about every relationship pairing that can be will be. I'll try to warn folks in the notes up here before the stories that have any stuff. :)

This one is officially M/F but Mostly Tame (A bit more tame than prior ones).

If you get to the end of this story and liked it, Comments are better for everybody. They are part of what gets me writing more.

Mirror, Mirror...

Small to Say the Least

Updated July 4th, 2012

Plans for Life:

Proper education

Decent job

Good place to live

Cozy bed

Somebody to love

Retire after a long life

Have some fun

Adventures

I remembered making the list when I was a kid. Funny how life can bring back memories from that far back. We had to pick eight tiles from a word game and put in things that started with those letters. When asked what kind of adventures, I offered answers like theme parks and maybe an African safari. At no point in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the adventures would include taking advice on properly massaging between the toes of a huge creature that strongly resembled a displacer beast.

The huge, black, six-legged feline was on his back as I sat straddled just below his middle set of legs and rubbed a paw the size of a serving plate. My hands were barely as big as even one of his toes. He almost didn't fit in the room. But though he could probably swat me through a wall or bite my head off with one gulp, I felt safe and had no worries. As I sat and felt him purrrrrrrr languidly, I realized how long it had taken for me to lose my worries.

"So why exactly does getting a foot massage feel better for you when you have six feet?" I finally asked, unable to hold back my curiosity.

"I dunno," he murmured. "It just does."

I had decided to name the cat Shadow. It was gender-neutral enough, and Shadow was always black. Okay, sure, maybe it was a bit cliche, but Shad was thrilled to have a name. No prior masters ever gave the famulus a real one.

Shad spent the past month slowly pushing the envelope on what I could tolerate. He also told me tales of his life and helped me learn my own skills. I had a tendency now to think of Shad's gender as whatever he was at the moment, though I still got kind of confused when the black feline had both a male and female self around at the same time. I was reluctant to think 'it' at any point, but he pointed out I had to sometimes, just for my own sanity.

I really had to work to keep track of time now. All of my personal electronics had ceased to have any battery left in them long ago. The time bubble meant no way to charge them. My watch still ran, but on Shad's advice, it was in a drawer and unwatched. After all, when the time field came down, no time at all would have passed outside. Overall, though, I think I was there for about two and a half months so far. Maybe three. It was hard to tell in this timelessness. It could have been years, for all I knew.

I took a deep breath. "I think I'm ready."

He raised his head and glanced at me. "Are you sure?" he asked with worried care.

I nodded and smiled, getting a small shiver in anticipation. "I know it's taken a while, but I needed to make sure I could handle it first." I climbed off his body and he vanished, replaced by a lithe, humanoid female.

She stood and smiled, walking over to the bed. "Well, let's get comfortable then," she purred.

I stood and moved to the bed as well. No need to disrobe, as I had given up on the hassle of clothing after about two weeks. Too much happening and it got in the way. I stroked her back as I sat beside her and leaned in, closing my eyes. It would be my first time doing this.

"Relax," she murmured, her breath soft on my cheek. I felt her move closer to me.

I nodded. "I can do this. I want to do this. I need to do this!" I felt her tongue caress my face encouragingly as I let my hand carefully fall from her fur.

I gathered my thoughts, felt deep inside, and began to push. As I felt the surge approaching, I twisted the energy with my mind...

"You did it!" she exclaimed, excited.

I opened my eyes and looked at the world from a new viewpoint. I was seated on my rump, four black paws against the bed and a feline face carrying my eyes. My ears perked and I smiled as best I could with a cat's mouth.

"Your very first unassisted shift," she said proudly.

I nodded, feeling almost embarrassed. "It was a lot easier than I thought it would be."

"I told you so. I directed you in shifting so many times, but you wouldn't try on your own." She stroked my back. "See how easy it is?"

I stood up and walked in a careful circle, examining myself. All black fur, proper shape, cat's vision and hearing... Yes, I got it right. "Well, really, it's new to me. I mean, all my life thinking I was completely normal and then all this. I never imagined what would happen when the old man gave me the mirror."

"You wouldn't give me up for the world though," she said knowingly.

"No. I wouldn't," I said with a purr, rubbing my cheek against her knee.

I changed my stance and, for the first time ever, I also kept my eyes open when I shifted back to human. It was an unusual experience, but I figured it would be a good idea to get used to it if I intended to shift a lot.

Much of my training was focused on shifting and getting used to other forms. After my first assisted shift to become a crow, the idea of being a druid sorcerer was very appealing. A good selection of forms and the ability to choose, change, and handle new forms without a pause would be important. This was the first time I ever instigated and completed a shift entirely of my own volition though. All of my training shifts had been guided by my famulus using her link to me to control my magic through my will.

"You've also learned to shield yourself very well, so you know the stuff you need to know for defense and avoiding discovery," she said. She looked around at the bedroom, the omnipresent light and complete silence from the time pocket still obvious after all this time. "That means you can take down the time field now if you want to."

A good part of what I had to learn was to block myself off from outside magic and control of magic. A mage learned to control magic, while I was magic, so I just controlled myself and other magic naturally. The downside is that since I was literally magic, a malicious mage could control -me- if I was careless. Weeks had gone to learning to lock myself to my own will and shield myself from potentially-damaging things.

That learning, plus my shapeshifting control of my own body, made me highly resilient now. While I still had not tested such dramatic things as recovering from dismemberment, I already knew I could easily repair deep cuts and worse. She helped me with the pain when I was first learning, but after a while I was able to block my own pain. Shadow was thrilled with that development. She could steal my pain and take it to herself, but me being able to block it made it much better for both of us.

She had been very good. I knew how badly she wanted to make love to me, especially now that she had finally fully embraced the fact that she loved me. Hundred of thousands of years she lived, but her kind didn't know the concept of love. Whatever I did when I gave myself to her had messed everything up for us, but also made it all that much better. But when I told her I didn't want her to press me for it and that I wanted to get to know her and love her for herself first, she respected that.

"Are you ready to start sharing me with the world again?" I asked, stroking under her chin softly.

"Are you ready to deal with the world again?" she replied in kind. I could tell she desperately wanted to suggest a roll in the hay before we went out, but she still was behaving. I smiled slightly. I was close. Soon, I could handle even that.

"All I need to do is stay safe and treat things as normal for now, right?"

She nodded. "You know how to shield and keep control of yourself. The things that would have attacked are looking for easy prey, and you're not easy prey anymore." She leaned forward and licked my nose. "Also, the weird way we linked means I have access to your abilities. If anything bigger comes along, I will protect you."

I don't think she was aware of how bristled she got even at the thought of something threatening me. Her already-black fur seemed to get darker than black itself, almost like it was sucking in the light. I sucked in a breath as I felt the rage that flickered across her mind as she planned how to keep me safe.

Then I realized something important. She was scary. She was powerful to begin with, and the way she was linked to me made her even more so. No. She wasn't just scary. She was downright terrifying. That wasn't the important thing though.

The important thing was that I wasn't afraid of her.

I remembered how much I feared her when I first met her. I remembered powerful jaws piercing my flesh, ripping my throat from my body. I remember stumbling blindly and smashing my head by accident. I died because of my fear. Literally.

Maybe I was reborn. I dunno. Probably not, because it really had been a long process to reach this point, not just a sudden switch. As I looked at her unwitting display of furry fury, I felt no fear.

I felt loved.

Months ago, I wasn't the only one who was afraid. Despite her immense age and experience, my near-death recovery threw her into something completely new also. Her kind of entity didn't have the concept of love. Being a famulus, she was just a tool to her masters. Though some treated her better than others, she was still a non-person to most of them. Even though he called her a person, the old man who had given her mirror to me only had a twinge of his heart strings the same way a person would feel about a carefully-restored automobile. Along the lines of "Be sure to keep the leather in good shape. I loved that seat."

When we made the decision that the experiences she was having sounded like love, I was cautious. There were countless stories of false love from stress, or other kinds of false love. What we went through was undeniably stress. So I was slow and careful.

We went through a lot as she worked to train me in my magics. It wasn't easy to learn to trust my own instincts. But more importantly, we spent a lot of time just talking and enjoying each others' company. I slept with anything from a tiny kitten curled against my shoulder to a dozen big cats in a pile around me. I heard tales of wonder and spellcraft that made my head spin and was still amazed to this day that she was so interested in my mundane history. It made sense though. She rarely saw the normal side of the world.

Through it all, there was no fade in her feeling for me. I could feel her mind through it all. I knew how scared she was of it at first. I kept my promise to see her as a person and I was rewarded with what was already the most amazing time I could imagine. Considering all we went through, my imagination was pretty darn good now too. More so, the future bore promises of exponential improvements and excitement.

All of these thoughts were in a fraction of a smidgen of a second, if they even took that long. That was an important skill I had learned. It was like time froze for me as I evaluated a situation. I could work things over in my mind for as long as I needed. I could examine anything with any of my new magical senses while no time passed at all.

I snapped back to the moment and she became aware of my observations, instantly calming herself and gaining a less foreboding appearance. She was worried that she upset me. I smiled and took her in my arms, drawing her close to comfort her while she worked to digest the large amount of data my mind had just dumped on her.

A small smile crossed her muzzle as she relaxed and got through the information. Finally she leaned against me happily and twitched an ear.

"Thank you for understanding," she said with a purr. "You're overcoming a few decades of your own mind and the fears instilled in it. I'm overcoming hundreds of millennia on this world alone and enough time on my own world that I can't even remember a fraction of it.

"Okay, then. Back to the real world?" she asked. I nodded.

She climbed off the bed and took my hand, walking out to the living room with me. I glanced up at the globe of magic that was creating the time bubble. Now, trained, I could sense the energies in it. I could see the myriad tendrils of energy latched onto the chronos, holding my apartment stationary in the dimension of time.

"Remember: Absolutely no time has passed outside. It's exactly the same instant as when this was placed," she told me. "While technically you could leave now without turning it off, that would be a bad idea. Millions if not billions of years would pass inside the apartment before the pocket failed. Even if you walked back in a second later in the outside world, you'd find everything pretty much gone in here."

She pondered. "Well, more specifically, you'd turn around and find the whole thing not-here. The time pocket extends outside your walls. Everything inside it would be long gone from aging."

I nodded. It made sense. The pocket meant that absolutely zero time passed in the outside world. In that zero time, the pocket itself existed from start to finish. There was no way ever to get back into it if I left it.

She grinned at my thoughts. "I like you being smart. It makes things so much easier."

I smiled a little, then frowned. "Wait.. With disbelief affecting things, how could this get away with the apartment vanishing if I left the pocket to its own devices?"

"I also like being able to answer questions for you!" She nodded. "If you were going to leave it and have things inside dissolve over time, it never could have formed. Disbelief is nonlinear in time."

"So... I'm predestined to not leave the time pocket without turning it off?" That thought was oddly disturbing. The feeling that my choices were taken away from me didn't sit well.

"Not precisely." She squirmed in discomfort. "You could still leave it now. It would be a really bad idea though. You'd have to hope that either the time pocket failed much sooner than expected, causing no noticeable change, or something else happened to save the situation. If not, a rollback would happen." She gave a disturbed shudder and let out a little mewl.

"A...?" She never explained this before.

"Disbelief is damn powerful and doesn't give a flying fart about you. If you force its hand too strongly, it literally truncates the time stream and chops it back to where it can take action." Her ears laid to the side. "Even though there are infinite possibilities splitting infinite times at any moment, most of them are truncated. Like dead ends. As long as you never run face first into a dead branch, you're fine."

I shook my head. "You're very upset. There's more to it."

She whimpered. "If you upset the balance like that, the path forward, and back as far as needed to prevent the occurrence, would be wiped out. Most of the time it's transparent. All the way along this discussion, there have been an infinite number of dead ends that would lead to you stepping out somehow and the bubble staying too long. We never even started down them."

Her whiskers twitched. "I doubt you could have started us down one anyway. But in the future, you'll be able to start down a path before it's truncated... Then if it gets chopped out from beneath us, you'll be left in the time between time. Well, not you, really, but one possibility of you."

I shook my head, still not understanding. "What does that mean though?"

"You'd lose a part of yourself to maintain that presence. It would begin to siphon you off into nothing." She stared at me. "It's the most absolutely horrible way to be destroyed. It happened to one of my masters. He released me to link to his apprentice before he was too far gone, so I wasn't hurting for too long. But what I saw... what I experienced... It scars my existence forever."

I shuddered. "So no messing with trying to make a paradox. I'll keep that in mind." I paused and looked at her. "Why are you telling me all this stuff though? It's all so complicated."

She tapped my nose with a fingertip. "In the long run, you'll be learning a heck of a lot more. This is all slow learning to start."

If this was slow, I almost dreaded to think what fast training was. I turned my attention back to the weird thing in my living room and focused my mind. I reached out with... Well, just my will really... and latched on to its energy. Then I almost fell over.

The sensation was amazing! It really was like the spell itself was a part of me. It was no longer "Me, and that thing up there holding time still". It was ALL me.

"Careful," she warned quietly. "It's relatively harmless to lose yourself in the sensation of this magic, but things in the future may not be so benign." She patted my bottom affectionately. "Now, you take that down. I'll go turn off the helper machine in the kitchen."

I nodded. This was simple enough, despite requiring what seemed like incredible power. I wondered about the differences between Sorcerers and Mages again. To me, this was really just like it was a part of me. To a mage, it was something grasped in their mind's 'hand', like a tool, but not a part of them. They had to understand it from an outside view. I could understand it much more intimately.

I tensed, like I was moving my arm, and instead moved the tendrils of the time bubble. Readying myself, I felt out along each one, taking an inventory. Then all at once I detached them from the chronos.

The sudden return to time passing outside was odd. Strange how one gets used to the absolute silence without realizing just how loud a quiet day in the city could be. The time bubble was a self-maintained spell. Without its latch to the chronos as its source of power, it dissolved. I nodded, feeling satisfied with my accomplishment.

Then without warning, my front door opened.

I spun around, ready to confront whatever horrible beast was there.

"Welcome bac... Oh! Again?" The young woman averted her gaze as she stepped in and closed the door, blushing again. It was Harv's granddaughter.

"How did you know I just got back from the time bubble?" I asked, confused.

"What? How could I not know? I just went outside, then immediately turned around and came back in. Once I was out of it, anything I did to the space it occupied had to be after it came down." She glanced at me shyly before looking away again. "Um, did you want to get more comfortable?"

My brow creased in confusion at her odd behavior. "Are you okay?"

She glanced at me again, then turned to face me fully, a wry smirk gracing her lips. "Depends. Are you okay with the fact that you're stark naked?"

It took a moment for that information to digest. I glanced down at myself. "Oh. Huh... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I'll go find something to put on." How long ago would I have been more aware of that and blushing or embarrassed about the exposure? I turned to head for the bedroom. I should have some clothing there.

"Oh, no, it's fine," she said with a chuckle. "This is your home. The important thing is that you're comfortable with that now. Wizards of all types need to learn to let go of certain things. Letting go of your old embarrassments is a good start."

"He's made good progress, but not without a unexpected bump of epic proportion," Shad said as she padded back in from the kitchen as a normal black housecat. "You and I need to have a talk, and only because even if this is bad, I trust you and Harv to show some restraint." She trotted past me as I spun around again, then looked up at me. "I need to speak to her alone."

"You're right," the woman observed. "I wasn't expecting to be able to see you in the mirror yet, let alone out here. Either you've done nothing but have tremendously intense sex for years in the bubble or something odd is going on."

That niggled at me. "Wait... I thought the sex part was a joke."

"Oh, no," she said innocently. "Sex shares your soul in its direction, which lets the link work to form more easily."

"I see," I said slowly. That explained a lot. If linking to a famulus involved soul sharing, then completely giving one's soul up to them must make for a hell of a link. In fact... If I was made completely of magic, did I even have a soul? I jumped as a cold, feline nose found the back of my knee.

"Don't get all existential on me now," Shad said. "Soul, spirit, whatever, you are still you no matter what, and I love you."

The woman paused. "Wait, what? Love him?" She squinted. "Yeah. We need to talk."

I didn't have an opportunity to object as the two of them slipped past me into my bedroom and shut the door, closing me out. Guess I'd have to deal with being naked whether I liked it or not. I couldn't remember if I had any clothing outside my bedroom. Maybe in the laundry? A quick check showed no such luck.

I thought about it for a moment. If I could change into a bird with feathers, or a cat with fur, could I make clothing for myself? I probably had a while, so it could be worth trying. I internalized, focused, concentrated, and within a few minutes I extended myself into the change. I stayed human, and just tried to make the semblance of clothing.

When I paid attention to my surroundings again, I looked down at myself and frowned. Technically it was clothing, but it looked very fake and wrong, like it was rendered on a low-quality computer game. I focused again, this time paying attention to it, and soon I was able to buff up the detail and feel of the fabric. Much better.

My attention was suddenly caught by something at the window. If I had animal ears, I knew they would have twisted about. But before I could look, whatever caught my attention had already moved, heading toward the breezeway outside. It stopped by my front door and there was a knock.

A frown hit my mouth. Whatever was there had magic. I could tell that. The training Shad gave me covered that. I probed lightly, but I met no deceit or hiding, nor any negativity. Mostly curiosity. I wasn't sure if I could trust my probing yet, but my instincts didn't give me any alarms and my own curiosity was getting the better of me.

The door opened easily as I pulled on it, something I hadn't done for some time. I looked down to see a kitten in a slightly-torn up cardboard box. The feline looked up at me and mewled. The corner of my lip curled up in a wry grin. "You know I know you're not a cat," I murmured.

I felt an offer from the kitten, in magic. I didn't recognize it, but it seemed harmless enough. I accepted it carefully. "Now I know you know," the kitten said through the link. I examined the link curiously. It was just a way to communicate concepts without vocalizing. Useful. I'd have to remember this.

"You're a druid, aren't you?" it asked, though it was more of a statement than a question. I nodded. "You've got to be a new one, too, but you're already seeming decently aware of yourself. That means something... more... is going on. Maybe I shouldn't have come here." I sensed fear from the kitten all of a sudden. More focus from me and I realized it was afraid of me and getting ready to run.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said quietly. Then I focused on the communication link. "I am new, yes. I just spent a lot of time in a time bubble learning about myself and how to be a druid." I used that word and concept though it was a subset of sorcerer, because it seemed to work better.

The kitten paused, apparently considering this. "Somebody is training you and isn't a druid?" This was tinged with disappointment.

"My famulus is training me."

Its eyes widened. "You're brand new and you already have a famulus? One who can train you?" Now it was jealous, but only a little. More was awe. "I was hoping... but now you might not even join the fold."

I shook my head in confusion. "Hoping what? What fold?"

"Are you just going to make your guest stay outside while you talk at the door?" the mage's granddaughter asked behind me. I jumped. I thought they would still be in the bedroom talking.

"We talk fast," Shad said.

Okay, that worked. "Um, would you like to come in?" I asked the kitten. The look it gave me didn't look promising.

"It's okay, he's safe, Ashley," the woman said, peeking around me.

The kitten perked and leaped in through the door while the cardboard box just faded away. I shrugged and closed the door, then turned around as a new voice rang out. "Robin! You know him too?" That was the first I had gotten a name for the redhead.

"Aye. Gramps gave him the old mirror," Robin said.

Ashley looked around and spotted Shadow. Her eyes widened. "He must have been in a time bubble for a few centuries to have a famulus wasting energy like that."

Robin shook her head. "Not really. Only a few months from what I gather. It's complicated. The famulus isn't using any energy to be corporeal." She smiled and changed the subject, "So I can guess what brings you here. You were hoping to pick him up as a trainee?"

The kitten nodded, then in its place was suddenly a young woman. She was fully nude for just a half a second before a T-Shirt and shorts graced her body. I realized the clothing was exactly the same as I had worked on. "Me and Jack, but Jack knew he's a guy from birth, so sent me off alone. That makes sense, I guess, especially when we're brand new. I wasn't expecting to find a druid that was already so trained. Gave me a scare there."

"Harv gave him the mirror, and then we found out he's a sorcerer," Robin said. "I put him in a bubble so the famulus could link to him safely. It also trained him when he decided to be a druid. I guess you guys wouldn't sense him until he came out of the bubble though. Yeah, I guess that would be a shock, expecting to find a new, frightened druid, and instead finding a trained one."

Ashley paled a little, then shook her head to clear it. "He could have been a trick or trap of some sort, yes. But with you vouching for him, I'm okay with it." She shot a sideways glance over at my befuddled expression and grinned. "Besides, from the look on his face, I think we can still teach him a thing or two. ... hundred maybe..."

Robin sighed wistfully. "Well, look at me. I wasn't expecting that he'd become a druid. He was so uptight every time I saw him. I figured general sorcerer and I could try and have him to myself. Now I'll have to share him with the fold, if I even have a chance with him at all." I felt her eyes roam over me. "Maybe I'll get really lucky. I've heard druids are fun."

"Oh, you have NO idea," Ashley said with a smirk.

"Yes I do," Robin countered. "You're the one I heard it from!" She glanced at me again. "Maybe I'll still be able to get his attention when he's one of the fold, but I guess I'm not holding my breath anymore." She pouted a little. "I was almost hoping that his training would keep you from finding him too soon so I'd get a chance," she said softly.

"Wait, wait, what is this all about?" I asked, exasperated that I was being discussed so openly here.

"Careful," Shadow said before either of the two women could speak. "He's got training, but his mind is still fragile and filled with his old notions and upbringing."

I made a face that apparently amused them. Shadow shook her head and padded over to me. "Sit down," the cat said. I did so, on the couch, and she jumped onto my lap.

Shadow stood up and put a paw on each of my shoulders, looking me straight in the face. "There's no easy way to break this to you, so I figure I should just get it done and see." She took a deep breath. "Druids are generally worse than nymphs. It's a side effect of all the forms and global awareness and the desire for the benefits of it, especially amongst the fold. It helps the fold grow in power and awareness and generally is good for the entire fold, which in turn is good for the world as a whole."

I listened as she looked down and said, "I... I admit I forgot about the fold. I probably should've kept you in the bubble longer until you were ready for it." She glanced over at Ashley, who I gathered by now was another druid. "How many folds are there now anyway?"

"We've accomplished global unification," the druidess said. "Just one fold worldwide now, with two renegades that we know of, though they've been silent for decades, so they may be gone. Our numbers rarely grow though. We lose more than we gain." She shook her head sadly. "The good news is that we know who we will lose when we first find them, and we can't tell them that, but I can say we won't lose this one. The ones we will lose, all we can do is gain strength as a fold while they are, and make their time as pleasant as possible though they have no idea what's coming."

I couldn't begin to pretend that I wasn't confused and I let them know it. Worse than a nymph and losing druids both made no sense to me.

"Some druids are earthkin. They are predisposed to spend so much of themselves for the world that they become a part of it," Ashley explained. "They literally dissolve into the surroundings. While this is good for the world in general, they lose themselves entirely. Only their energy survives and is repurposed. All druids who will not do this in the end can easily sense those who will. We have a solid rule of not informing the earthkin of this. It only causes them panic and pain and sometimes even triggers their dissolution immediately. We can't tell them they won't, since they'd know the lie. So we just don't tell them about it at all."

She sighed. "Druids aren't all-powerful either. All magical entities can be killed or destroyed. We get almost exclusively short-term druids lately, and we've had more deaths than new full druids over time. So in the past thousand years, our number have gone down by a dozen or so. This may not seem like a lot until you realize that it leaves only eight of us." She smiled. "You're now the ninth true druid in the world. Plus about ten to twenty earthkin sorcerers at any given time. They are always told that membership in the fold is a jumping off point and temporary thing so they don't worry when the others vanish. We used to have three folds across the world and about fifty of us at our peak, back about ten thousand years ago."

"Wow... I didn't know it was that bad," Robin said. "I guess in retrospect I'm glad he became a druid." She reached over and took Ashley's hand. "Especially since he's a true druid, which helps me feel better. When I found out he'd chosen to be a druid, I worried for him."

I could make sense of that at least. The nymph part was the next inquiry, and it caused a giggle to be shared between both women.

"You've never read fiction or heard about nymphs?" Ashely asked. I shook my head. "Hookay... Well, have you heard of nymph as in the same word origin that nymphomaniac comes from?" I blinked. That I had heard of.

Shadow patted my cheek with a paw. "Druids are extremely sensual and sexual," she told me. "Animals and the world druids live in is all about life. Life is all about procreation and creating more life. Though druids can't actually do that themselves, it doesn't stop the urge that starts slow and grows into an immense force in their being. That and we're really attuned to positive energy."

I opened my mouth and had to close it again. I swallowed and shook my head. "So...druids are like all into sex all the time...?"

Ashley shook her head, "Not all the time, or even most of it, but it's an inescapable factor of druidity. The act benefits you, no matter what the other spirit is, and amongst the fold we all gain from it as a group. While it's not an always thing, it'll eventually be a burning desire or urge that grows over time and calls to be quenched."

The fact that I wasn't bothered about the idea that I'd have an urge to have sex with beautiful women like Ashley or Robin was easy enough. But Shad's concern told me there was more to it. "What's the catch?" I asked my famulus.

She looked down and chuckled softly. "Yeah, I knew you'd get there. Think about it. Druids change forms. Attachment to the world. Any other soul." She stared deep into my eyes again. "Your old-style human mind is still thinking about sex with beautiful women, so you didn't think that most of it won't be human in the slightest, and a good bit of it won't necessarily be female either, regardless of whether you are male or female yourself."

I knew my face paled, despite my efforts to keep it from doing so. "Wait... What do you mean not human, and male or female?"

Ashley made a face. "Wow... Okay, yeah, a lot to teach him. Dang, usually we find new druids earlier before they get all set in their ways."

"Yeah, you were, what, nine when you survived your change and the fold found you?" Robin asked.

The druidess nodded. "Eight. For me, it was a cool new adventure. I didn't even think boys were icky yet and adjusting to the change was trivial. I just grew up into it. Now, five hundred years later, it's just completely normal. But even then I didn't have much to worry about. When I started getting the urges, I didn't have any ideas about what was proper, just what felt good."

She turned her attention to me and sighed. "So, bluntly put, most of the sex is with animals. Whether they be other druids in animal forms, or regular animals. It's not bad, since you're in an animal form yourself almost all the time anyway." She then promptly turned into a wolf and sat down, displaying the fact that she was now distinctly male. "You didn't think we were limited to a specific gender, did you?"

The wolf nodded. "Plus, when the urge gets you and a nearby friend, sometimes there's no chance or option to shift. Disbelief makes that frequent, really. Then, depending on your status compared to your friend, you may have no good option. Whether you're female and trading licks with another female or taking it from a male, or male and mounting a female or another male, or being mounted by a male, it's all good." He tilted his head. "Honestly, if you're male and the companion you end up with is too, most males strongly prefer to mount you than be mounted anyway." He sighed.

I was still pale. Maybe a kid could grow up into the concept with no problem, but the idea of animal orgies was a bit more than my mind wanted to wrap around right now, despite the past few months of accommodation. The concept of beastiality still carried a huge taboo for me.

Shadow licked my cheek affectionately. "I count too. Do you think of me as a beast, or a person?" I relaxed a little under the kind touch. Shad was a person, even with her feline forms. "Anyway, you'd be in a form yourself, so you can communicate with them and see that they are individuals with feelings and such too.

"Plus it's mostly not normal animals," she said cryptically. "They're harder to gain as companions just because of lack of sentience issues."

"True," Ashley-wolf said, which didn't help me understand any better. I had a feeling that all of them found my burning curiosity cute or funny.

"Why don't you show him an example?" Robin suggested with a playful smirk.

The wolf chortled and stood up, moving to the center of the room. "Oh, okay, though I expect this won't be the last he sees. It's just fun to see him like this." He shifted again and my jaw dropped at the sight before me. Majestic, strong, beautiful, proud... Back to female, I noted. I'd have to start getting used to a complete disparity in gender association I supposed. I stood up, forcing Shad to jump off my lap and walked forward slowly, unable to tear my eyes off her.

"This is just me in this form, not a real one," she commented.

"There are real ones?!" I demanded. The three of them just laughed and I realized that it was a silly question, given the recent events.

I reached out with a hand to touch her shoulder, just to confirm with touch what my eyes and magical senses told me was real there, even if it was just a formed druid. She sat and lifted her opposite paw, placing it on my shoulder in return as I felt along the feathered wing that also graced her shoulder. "I thought that was supposed to have claws or talons in the front?" I observed, almost in a daze.

Ashley chirred, glancing at the other two. "His amazement is priceless. This kind of thing makes it so worth it." Her piercing attention turned back to me. "They come in both flavors, so to speak. I just like this one better for myself. I mean, a paw on the shoulder is much nicer than a talon, right?"

I grinned widely as I reached up to feel her foreleg as the paw clenched on my shoulder just a little. "Okay, true." I had no idea why my mind was fluctuating so much between trying to freak out and being giddily happy, but I definitely hoped I'd get more of these moments of wonder than times of panic.

Then I made the connection. Shad was helping. I realized that my normal response would have been to scream and try to claw through the front door, then maybe, MAYBE... stop running when I fell over. I sent silent thanks to her. This awed and pleased wonder was sooooo much better than pure terror.

I realized it was a good world I was in now when I had a loving famulus, my own powers to learn and grow, and could be comfortable in this kind of situation. The size of the claw-bearing, feline paw was nothing new to me after my time with Shadow, but the lithe and powerful body and the razor-sharp beak that was easily big enough to snap my head off and swallow it whole was entirely that much more.

This was a huge new world, and I was small to say the least. I just really liked the fact that I could stand here and be comfortable in my living room, face to face with a griffin.

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