D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

*I’m just going to own it. I’ve decided it’s completely normal to have your girlfriend on your head if she’s currently a cat.* 

[Wait what? I thought we agreed it was better to skirt around that issue…]

*No, you offered it as a solution despite the fact I can feel the idea causes you pain, probably from the fact I’d be denying you’re my girlfriend and you know what? Frankly a bit of embarrassment on my end is worth it to keep you happy. That’s not even considering the fact that… now that I’ve thought it over… is it really any of their business? We can at the very least prove your intelligence and at that point I see no further issues.* 

Lily didn’t have an answer to that. She felt very warm at the idea Kat was willing to go out of her way like this. Even if Kat insisted it wasn’t too big of a deal, Lily was pretty sure that even in a fantasy world this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. Still, Kat answered without further hesitation. ”Quite a lot has happened since I last visited. I got a girlfriend, and now that same girlfriend has become a Memphis, which is just a type of cat. Also, we’ve been magically bonded so being in separate dimensions wouldn’t be healthy.”

Gareth looked a little sheepish but a glance at Green revealed she was just nodding seriously as if Kat’s insane explanation made a great deal of sense. Nixilei still looked a little confused, but when she asked, ”What’s a girlfriend?” it was clear the sticking point was not the fact Lily was a cat at the moment.

”Um… did that not translate properly?” asked Kat confused as she looked between everyone.

Green shrugged, ”I dunno what Nix is questioning about it. The translation WAS a bit weird but it makes perfect sense.”

”I disagree Green, clearly. I mean do I just take, ’very committed but not to the level of courting except there is a magic bond involved now’ at face value?” asked Nixilei

”Wait that’s what you heard? I just got ’Not quite courting culturally speaking but about as serious a relationship as you have with Gareth’ from Kat just then… weird… Gareth what did you get?” asked Green.

”Same as you Green, or well pretty much,” answer Gareth, likely receiving the same but with Green instead of himself as the named party.

Nixilei frowned further. ”So… you mean to tell me we all hear different things when Kat speaks?” asked Nixilei with some concern.

Kat shook her head and hopped in to answer, ”Not normally. It’s just when concepts don’t quite translate across languages well, or when you lack certain things to know what the word might mean. If I say something that you don’t really have a word or translation for it tries to fit it into something you CAN understand. I guess for some reason you think the bond is particularly important to your understanding of the word. Perhaps because you’re more magically inclined?”

”Yes… yes I suppose so… it makes me question why you aren’t simply engaged?” said Nixilei.

Kat blushed lightly. Even for her getting married was still somewhat embarrassing to think about, ”Um… well… where we are from you tend to get to know people for a while before getting engaged. It’s not really appropriate…”

”But you are magically bonded? It’s not like that’s something you can just get rid of… you had to pretty serious when you agreed to it. The bond would have failed if either of you had any doubts about being together forever. It’s why most people don’t go through with during a marriage ceremony. Particularly embarrassing when it fails… so it dropped out of favour,” said Nixilei.

*Lily do you know if that was the case with our bond? I mean… I kinda was thinking it was forever but… I also just wasn’t thinking about it all that much? I mean it was just something to do if you wanted to be a Memphis and I knew you wanted to be a Memphis so you’d live as long as I did…*

[I don’t know Kat… maybe? I don’t really know how the normal Memphis bonding works. They aren’t as intelligent as I am so… maybe it’s different?]

*Let’s just go with the easy explanation then.* ”Nobody in my home dimension really gets bonded. It’s not something that they even know about, and I got access to because of a favour I did to some powerful things… so… while we do have the bond, it’s not like that means anything to everyone else. We’d still like to do things a bit more normally for everyone else’s sake,” answered Kat.

Nixilei nodded at this, understanding it was really just a cultural thing. Lily however… [Kat did you just sort of propose to me?]

*Nope. Technically you did that already when you decided to become a Memphis and magical bind yourself to me forever. I just agreed with everything.* 

Lily wished she had a good response to discount Kat’s explanation but it made a lot of sense. It’s not like either of them went into it with the plan to abandon one another eventually. Lily had nobody she’d rather be with than Kat and Kat knew that even if things didn’t work out how Lily wanted, she’d never abandon her friend, regardless of if everything else worked out or not.

Green, at this point, decided they’d stopped talking for too long and announced, ”Let’s all get out of the cellar. Why are we even having this conversation here? We’ll pay Kat at the end depending on what we get up to in the tournament but sitting in this dark cellar trying to work out the exact details of a friends relationship is just kinda weird don’t you think?”

Gareth just sighed and let himself get pulled out of the room by Green, labelling this whole thing as firmly ’not my problem’ and accepting his fiancé’s stance on things. Nixilei looked a little sheepish now and bowed slightly to Kat before following behind the other two. Nixilei knew her main concern wasn’t the relationship at all but the translation and the fact Green and her did not share the same ’explanation’ of the word. Still, Green was right, it was a strange line of questioning she decided to abandon for now. She would however keep an ear out for any other strange translations and pounce on the chance to investigate them.

Kat followed after them with an amused smile while Lily experimentally flapped her wings. Not enough to get any sort of lift, but enough to realise there had been a sort of pressure on her back on Earth, something noticeably absent now. She knew Kat had similar issues on Earth, especially in regards to flight and was a little upset to note it clearly applied to her as well now. Earth might have been her home, but it clearly wasn’t all that happy to have her there.

Kat noticed the melancholy mood from Lily but said nothing. It wasn’t particularly powerful at the moment, and Kat believed letting Lily handle it by herself would be for the best rather than just trying to drown the feeling out with her own feelings of support and care.

Green got to a closed door set into the ’ceiling’ of the place that Green swung open to reveal a strange forest scenery. It was strange because the trees all had green bark instead of the usual brown and the leaves were blue like the ocean. They blended somewhat with the sky, but the branches and lack of ’clouds’ made it clear where the leaves ended and the true sky began.

”Welcome to my one of my parents vacation cottages. You’ll see it on the right, but it’s not really a cottage, they just call it that. This is pretty close to the meeting point we were given for the next round so we’re staying here. We head off tomorrow,” announced Green.

Kat looked over at the ’cottage’ in question and found Green was right. Even if it was done in a cottage style with vines crawling up the sides and bricks stacked together to make it, the ’cottage’ was about the same or slightly larger than Vivian’s house. It had two stories with a large balcony she could only kind of see from this angle. The cottage, or in reality, house was forward and to the right of where the group was currently. It seemed like the storage cellar the group had exited was in the back off to the side of the house.

When Kat finally saw the front of the house, she just smiled. Everything had been done to make the place feel like it had sort of… grown into the scenery. The vines were the same green as the tree trunks and had made their way into the slight gaps in the bricks in a few places, the front side of the house had a collection of ragged bushes that made it look like the house had grown its way out of the ground instead of being built there, and the door was painted the same blue as the leaves. Shaped the same way too.

”Well, come on. Don’t just stare at it. Let’s go inside and get settled in!” said Green cheerily.