Mordecai managed to keep a smile from his face as the teen glared down at him. She was adorable, which Kazue agreed with enthusiastically, but he was pretty certain she wasn’t likely to appreciate that as a compliment. “They are gifts, you should keep them on for the rest of the trip.” Fuyuko’s look was skeptical as he continued, “The pixies are the way they are because of Li’s influence. They were originally part of the puzzle but weren’t much more than that. But Kazue’s preferences and actions caused all our inhabitants to awaken to sapience, and when Li arrived they began to change. Some of our flower faeries are now mushroom faeries, and a few have become shadow faeries or otherwise changed and evolved outside of our normal control. And Li has spent many, many hours having long conversations and swapping stories with the fairies.”
He gestured at a pair of pixies who were arguing over whose turn it was to be a blue rose and who was supposed to be a red rose, “And they are going to be ever so eager to ‘help’ you solve the puzzle. And remember, you have to convince all the correct faeries to be in flower form at the same time.” It wasn’t quite as hard as it sounded, the evolution of the faeries had made it so the real challenge of the puzzle was getting the right number of faeries to coordinate being flowers that were close enough to the intended flowers. But he wasn’t going to tell her that part, no one else got that clue.
Fuyuko sighed, then shook her head and smiled, “I guess it is sort of like some of the stories told about Him.” She then turned her attention to start working out exactly how this puzzle was supposed to work. The arguing pixies gave a clue about how the faeries are the flowers, but finding the proper match by getting them to transform long enough to examine them, and then keep track of which one was which, and getting five of them to be their proper flower in the proper location at the same time was much trickier.
While Fuyuko worked on coaxing the pixies into a semblance of order, Mordecai took the opportunity to discuss an idea with his wives, and then they brought Bellona in on their thoughts to make sure she would be okay with her role.
Once the luponi girl had completed the puzzle, collected her prizes in the form of small shiny gifts from the pixies, and the door opened, Mordecai got her attention, “We’ve been talking about the contractor idea and have decided that, pending the results of the spar and a few more days of getting to know each other, we will probably offer you the contract. However, we have a couple of stipulations, because of your age. My wives and I would act as your guardians or foster parents, depending on how you want to look at it, until you are eighteen, and Bellona could act on our behalf much like an older sister or aunt. While you are our ward, we would expect a reasonable amount of obedience to our decisions regarding your personal life. Taking you on as our contractor is also taking in a teen child, and this feels like a proper balance of the increased responsibility, partly because it enables us to act upon the responsibility better.”
He smiled slightly at her dubious expression, “I know, that sounded rather formal, but sometimes that is needed so that everyone is clear on the intent. We like what we know of you, and the others are trusting in my judgment of trusting Li and Gil's opinions, who both seem to like you, so we’re pretty sure we’re compatible. It just feels better to be officially taking care of you as our ward for a few years, rather than have you as just a standard contractor.”
“Yer a bit short ta play the part of my daddy, don’t ya think?” Fuyuko retorted. He was pretty certain that she was deflecting to give herself some emotional space and time to think, which was fine, but he decided to play with her as well.
“Well, if that’s your concern, allow me to alleviate it,” he said as he began shifting into his ambassador form and growing taller until he topped even Gil. He grinned down at her, “What do you think? This is one of my specific alternate forms.”
The girl’s expression became such a mix of different feelings that her face became effectively unreadable. Mordecai wasn’t certain what he’d just triggered, but he decided his best course of action was to relax into a slight smile and just wait patiently for her to start working through whatever was going on.
Fuyuko’s mind was such a whirl that she couldn’t think coherently at first. It wasn’t just the height, it was also the horns and the offer to act as her guardian by someone who was trusted by and friends with her god. She wasn’t even sure what she really wanted when she asked in a near whisper, “Yer horn, can I touch it?”
She watched as he knelt and lowered his head to make his horn more reachable. Her fingers touched it hesitantly at first, feeling along the surface. It wasn't exactly like an Oni's horn; it was too sharp and almost crystalline in its smoothness. But it was about the right size and shape for a one-horn to have. “Not Oni,” she commented as her thoughts drifted uncertainly.
“No, or at least, not entirely. I combined a lot of different traits in this avatar, and there are some oni aspects to my body.” His voice in this form was a little deeper, but he was speaking softly now, creating a comforting rumble.
Fuyuko hadn’t realized how much she’d been hurting, having no one near her who shared this prominent trait. Even with the friends she could only vaguely remember from the sanctuary, there was a sense of distance, of being different. This was the first time she’d been able to experience this touch of familiarity in years. “How?” She asked, not certain what she even meant by the question.
“I’ve lived many lives in many different forms, some of those lives have been as Oni. This isn’t superficial shape changing, this is as much an aspect of me as fox forms are for kitsune.”
Oh. The full weight of that missing feeling of connection came crashing into her, and her body started trembling as her vision began to blur. She saw his head raise and his arms spread, and she threw herself into that embrace as she began sobbing. Warm, strong arms encircled her and held her close, just tight enough to comfort.
Time lost meaning as she cried, losing herself in the flood of emotions. She knew that she had been loved at the sanctuary, but having someone more like her, right here in front of her, was different somehow. But eventually, she began to regain control and pulled back slowly while sniffling. Mordecai handed her some soft cloth that he seemed to pull out of nowhere, and she started cleaning up her face while very carefully not looking at the wet area of his shirt, “Um, sorry about that,” Fuyuko managed to mutter in her embarrassment.
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied, and a bit of magic danced over his clothes, cleaning and drying them, “Are you feeling better now?”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Did she? Fuyuko wasn’t certain, and thought about it while she finished calming down. After a while, she shrugged, “I guess. It’s just, I haven’t had a chance ta be around many people with horns too, ya know? Not since my parents died. I didn’t realize how much that meant ta me. And it all hit at once. Er,” she coughed uncomfortable, “could we not tell Gil? It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”
Mordecai smiled and nodded, “We can do that. Do you want me to stay for the rest of your delve?”
“Um, yeah, I guess that might be nice. Ya don’t mind?”
“Not at all. And it’s not a bad idea for me to practice anyway, it’s good to be used to walking around casually . I’ve only really used this form for spars.”
The way he said that prompted a question from her, “Just how many forms do ya have?”
He grinned in response, “Three primary ones. That I am willing to admit to. Plus the ability to blend on the fly, but that takes more deliberation than taking on a form I’ve developed.”
So at least one more ‘primary’ form that he was teasing the existence of, but also kind of endless forms. Fuyuko felt amusement bubbling up inside of her, “You’re sorta weird, but I think I like it. Makes me the normal one around here, and I kinda like that change.”
Mordecai ruffled her hair, which hadn’t happened while she was standing in a long time, and it made her weirdly happy. But she didn’t feel like admitting that right now and rolled her eyes at him before moving on to check out the next puzzle room. It couldn’t be worse than dealing with the faeries, right?
Well, she was partly right. The puzzle itself didn’t involve the faeries, she had to figure out this water channel contraption to make the correct flowers bloom instead, but doing that without accidentally drawing water away and causing flowers to wilt was hard enough on its own. Doing it with pixies flitting about and offering advice about which levers to pull made it much harder to stay focused. At least some of them were distracted by his current form, as they were busy decorating his horns and wings instead of decorating her.
The idea of living here was growing on her. The pixies were only a little annoying but harmless and kind of cute, and the bunny people seemed friendly. If the trio were going to be her guardians, she’d have to put up with more rules than she did at the sanctuary, but given how the faeries were acting, it didn’t seem like they made a lot of random rules without reason. It would be a crazy place to call home, but that doesn’t mean it would be a bad place to call home.
Yeah, it could be fun, but that was part of what made it scary too. Of course, was there such a thing as a good adventure that wasn’t at least a little bit scary at times?