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Luka's Story-Paradox	By : Ditmag Category: +M through R > Monster Girl Quest Views: 2709 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Monster Girl Quest Paradox is the intellectual property of Tortorro Restistance. I make no money from this.

Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
I awakened in a soft bed, not even remembering having passed out. Had I passed out during the queen harpy’s rape? Yes, I distinctly remembered that. But I’d awakened and we’d cured her. I definitely remembered that as well. A harpy had said something about sex being on the table, which was par for the course with monsters. Rape you, then offer to make it up to you with sex. And then…. What happened after that? And where was I?
I turned over in the bed and came face to face with the Queen Harpy. “Guh!” I said. The queen smiled.
“You’re finally awake,” she said softly. “You slept for sixteen hours.”
“Why am I here?” I asked. “Did we….?”
“We certainly did,” the queen laughed. “But you remember that part. If you’re asking if we did anything in this bed, the answer is no. After you and your friends cured me, you began showing signs of disorientation. Alice caught you as you fainted a few moments later. You probably weren’t as ready to be on your feet so soon after I raped you as you thought you were. I know I already said it, but I’m so sorry for that. If I hadn’t been pulled off of you…”
“it was a disease,” I said, pulling back the cover to get out and then quickly pulling it back over us again. The queen was stark naked!
“True, I wasn’t completely responsible for my actions,” she replied. “But I remember everything. I still made a choice. I should have been stronger. The compulsion may have been overwhelming, but queens should be able to resist any compulsion if it is possible to do so. I am ashamed to admit that I do believe it was possible. Difficult, but possible. I shamed myself, and hurt you.”
And so you thought it would be a good idea to have me in your bed next to your naked body? I thought, but did not say. In truth, I was already over it. Either I had grown too used to being assaulted, or whatever Ilias had done to me all those years ago inoculated me against trauma. I wasn’t sure if it was healthy to no longer be bothered about being raped, but I didn’t miss the nightmares or flinching when people tried to touch me when I wasn’t prepared for it.
“So how did I get here?” I asked. I didn’t add, and who thought this was a good idea!? I looked under the covers at my own body. I was naked too!
“We are in a tower,” the queen answered. “None of your companions were strong enough to feel comfortable carrying you down several flights of stairs. It was thought best that you be carried to my bed. Your friends didn’t like the idea very much, fearing your reaction when you awakened. But they knew that I would not do you harm now that I am cured, and even a kitsune’s tails would have a difficult time making you as comfortable as my body and my wings. I have been here with you holding you for the past sixteen hours, until you began to stir. I hope that it in some small way makes up for what I did to you.”
My rational mind said that she was speaking nonsense, but nevertheless her concern moved me. I was also used to monsters by that point. Monsters had barely any concept of rape. Mostly because they rarely got raped, so they couldn’t see things from the perspective of the person being raped. They knew in their heads that it was bad, but had no inkling of how to deal with someone who had just been raped. Hint: you do not take their clothes off, get naked yourself, place them in your bed, and cuddle them all night! And yet…. I was happy. Had I gone crazy? Did I have Stockholm Syndrome? Or was I starting to see things from the monster perspective? Or maybe, as I said the first time, I was just used to it.
“I’m not sure how much you remember from last night,” the queen said. “But I told you that you would give me children.”
That made me stiffen. I’d briefly forgotten that. She noticed my reaction and placed her hand on my shoulder.
“Do not fear, Luka,” she said. “I did not conceive. I was surprised to find out that I had not. Queen-level monsters can control which sperm reaches their eggs. The Monster Lord was concerned that I had conceived as well, and was as surprised as I that I had not. Then she told me that it could be because you were not from this world. How interesting.”
“Yes, conception with monsters has always been difficult for me,” I said. “Although not impossible.”
“Ah, so you have children?” the queen asked. Me and my big mouth.
“I do,” I said. “But please keep that between us. That’s not something that I can reveal to my companions at this time.”
“Your secret is safe with me. As much as I hate the idea of keeping things from the Monster Lord, my debt to you is great. I would risk all but treason to repay it. Respecting your wishes is a minor slight to the Monster Lord. And you did say that you could not tell your companions ‘at this time’. I have faith that you will reveal it when it is necessary to do so.”
“Thank you so much,” I said, impulsively kissing her forehead. She smiled and caressed my face, then embraced me, her naked body pressed against mine. My body reacted immediately.
“Oh my!” the queen said. “Such vigor!”
“You know that with queen level magic there was no way my body wouldn’t do that.”
“Pardon me. I shouldn’t treat you so. You are a good man, Luka. If I hadn’t forced you, I would regret not bearing your children. You must be an excellent father.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I had tried, and Nero and Neris had lived good, upstanding lives. I was also proud of my role in raising Little Alice, who had gone on to be the greatest Monster Lord in history, something which I often kidded my wife about, since she had retired from the position at a fairly young age. But Alipheese the Seventeenth was always Little Alice to me. I’d always assumed that all three children had been more Alice than me. Heck, I placed myself a distant fourth behind Granberia and Tamamo in the raising children department. But I had tried.
Seeing that I was lost in thought, the queen had simply been staring at my face, a benign smile on her own. “What are you thinking about?” she finally asked.
“I’m so sorry, your majesty!” I said. “I… space out a lot lately.”
“Space out? Is that a thing on your world? Is it a disease? Is it contagious!?” the queen pulled back, alarm on her face.
“What?! No, it’s just a figure of speech! It means I get lost in thought a lot. I’ve lived a long time and I tend to spend a lot of my present thinking about my past.”
She giggled and shoved me playfully. “I know it was a figure of speech!” she laughed. “I was messing with you. I may not have known what it meant, but it makes sense. I like that phrase. ‘Spacing out’. I too, space out frequently. The duties of a queen require a lot of reflection. Especially in the last several months, I have had little to do but think. At least when sane thoughts were possible. I’m afraid that I couldn’t hold a thought for more than a few minutes before lewd things crossed my mind.”
“Ah, so for a few months you had a man’s brain,” I joked.
“Is it true that men cannot go more than a few minutes without a lewd thought?” she asked, giggling.
“I don’t really know. I was never that type of guy. Although my mind did go there while we were casting that spell to cure you, so maybe I am that type of guy?”
“Well then,” the queen said pulling me towards her and rolling on top of me. “I still owe you much. If you would like some repayment with lewdness, I am quite good at it. What you experienced wasn’t my best work. I was crazed. I can pleasure you more deliberately now, focusing only on what you want. Do not misunderstand me. I am not oblivious to your trauma. If you do not wish to, I will not be insulted. I beseech you, though, give me something that I can do to make up for what I did.”
My penis was urgently voting for letting her do her worst. My brain had more practical concerns, and I was pretty proud of my brain for not succumbing.
“This is going to sound crass,” I said. “But I wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t a big time need.”
“I assure you, I will not be insulted. I raped you last night and now I’m on top of you. I may sound playful, but I am not comfortable with this at all. So anything you desire, I will give you, if I am able, and if it is moral.”
“The things you were offering to do to me were moral?” I asked playfully. Why was I so nonchalant about this?
She laughed. “The things I will do to you are so sinful that you may not be able to face that goddess you have chosen as a companion afterwards. But you know I am a monster. Such things are not sinful to us. They are only natural. Well, not ALL of the things I would do to you are natural. So tell me, what crass thing do you desire? I assume it is not of a sexual nature, so tell me now so that I may get off of you.”
I was reluctant to say it. As obscene as asking her to do things to me seemed, especially under the circumstances, what I was about to ask for seemed worse to me. Or perhaps I was trying to rationalize myself into having an amazing morning?
“Why don’t you get off of me now if you know this is inappropriate?” I asked, avoiding answering the queston.
“Because your little friend seems to be trying to convince you of something, and I don’t wish to get off just to get back on again. Now say what you wish to say, before I begin persuading your penis to remain here for the next few hours. You know I don’t want to do that, and I know you don’t really want that. So why not save us both from having sex that neither of us really want to have?”
I still couldn’t say it. The queen wasn’t bluffing, however. She began pressing her waist down, squeezing my penis between my body and hers. I decided to blurt it out, lest we have the most awkward sex in history.
“Do you have any money?” I asked.
“Money?” the queen harpy said, sliding off me abruptly. “Wow, that is crass. But money does pay debts. Unfortunately, I have none. Money is of little use to monsters except where we interact with human society. As a group, we harpies have a few thousand gold among us from doing various jobs. Given that you have saved us all, there would be barely a grumble if you asked for it. I know that you are on a very important mission and the need is great. Say the word, and I shall order the harpies to gather all of their gold and give it to you.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I said. “Happiness Village hasn’t been doing well economically since you left. The harpies will need that money. The village will need that money.”
“I do have some valuables, gifted to me over the years by various humans. I am sure they could fetch some gold.”
She reached over to her side of the bed, towards a bedstand, and handed me her tiara. I observed with amazement that it was the exact same tiara that the queen harpy on my world had possessed. It was so much a part of her look that it was hard to imagine the queen harpy without it. Were those diamonds real? They had to be. Indeed, this would probably sell for tens of thousands of gold, probably enough to fund the entire adventure, although given that I knew very little about where any of this was going, I couldn’t be sure.
“No,” I said, handing it back. “This is basically your crown, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she said. “But it is yours, if you want it. I know you do not ask out of greed, or to keep it as a trophy. I cannot imagine a better use for it than to save the world. Your party has grown large, and I’m sure it will grow larger. They will need to be equipped and fed. Take it.”
I continued to hold it out to her. I wasn’t taking her tiara. She smiled and accepted it back. She placed it back on her bedstand and simply stared at me again.
“Now what is it that you’re thinking?” I asked.
“About what kind of man you are, to be so kind to me.”
“It doesn’t bother you, does it?” I asked, remembering how much my kindness had upset another world’s Tamamo. Sometimes mercy could be a cruelty if people believed they should be punished. I didn’t see that in the queen’s eyes, however.
“It does not,” she replied. “I believe that gratitude honors the giver. If you had wanted to take some sort of revenge on me I would have understood, and submitted to it, within reason. I would have held no resentment against you for your wrath. But since you have chosen forgiveness, I am grateful. How could I be bothered by such a gift?”
“I like the way you think. When you’re capable of thinking, that is.”
“Speaking of thinking,” the queen said. “I just had an idea. You need money, I know where you can get it. Have you ever heard of Midas Village?”
I had not. There had been no Midas Village back home. I shook my head.
“Midas Village is so named because it has a gold mine nearby and they are renowned for their work with gold. They make gold weapons, gold armor, and golden magical items.”
“That doesn’t sound very practical,” I said.
“It is not. But those who prefer to merely play at battle and have money enjoy owning these things. But the mines have become a home for many local monsters. That makes the gold much harder to acquire, and thus much more valuable. If you and your friends were to gather even a small amount of that gold….”
“But isn’t that stealing? You said it was their home.”
“A home which they took from the rightful owners who dug the mines,” she shrugged. “In any case, the gold means nothing to them. They simply like the shelter. Humans never learn not to dig mines and expect that monsters won’t make themselves at home in them. A nice man like you might even convince them not to attack you while you collect some gold. If they do attack you, they have only themselves to blame for what happens. They do not own the mines. They share it with many other denizens who have as much right to be there as they do. You will not be a trespasser, anymore than you were a trespasser in this forest. The forest belongs to all.”
It sounded reasonable, and I decided that she was right. I wasn’t sure about barging into the mines when monsters lived there, but if they didn’t care about the gold…. And the world was at stake. I decided that Midas Village should be our next stop, depending on exactly where it was.
“Thank you so much, your majesty,” I said gratefully.
“Please, you are not my subject. Call me Lucretia, my given name. This does not settle the debt between us,” she stressed. “I did not want to have sex with you, or give you my peoples’ money. But what I did to you was awful. It would not be paying back a debt for a wrong if it was pleasant for me. Simply telling you of a place to get money is nothing.”
Since the queen was rational, unlike Ratty, I decided to end the conversation the way Alice had taught me, long ago.
“Tell you what,” I said. “When this is over, and I’ve saved the world, I’m going to come back here, and you and all of the unmarried harpies can show me the best time any man has ever had.”
That was my experience talking. Harpies were one of the most formidable fighting forces alive when fighting in a coordinated fashion. As I found out for one of my birthdays, they were as formidable as succubi when coordinating their sexual skills. My offer made the queen smile.
“In that event, you had best prepare yourself. What I had planned for you as the savior of my people was more than almost any man could take and remain sane. If you save the entire world….”
“I might be saving more than just this world. Ilias told me that multiple universes might be at stake.”
“Multiple universes! My goodness, the things we’d have to do to you after you came back triumphant from such a quest…! We must plan! We must invent maneuvers never before tried! We must—Wait, you’re serious, aren’t you? More than just our world is at stake?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then you’ll need more than just information on where to find gold and promises of sexual favors at a later date. It is the duty of the harpy race to directly contribute to this quest. Two of my best shall accompany you.”
“More companions? Sounds great. I’ve probably dallied long enough, though. I’d better get up.”
“Your clothes have been washed and placed in the top left drawer on the floor.”
Good to know, I thought. She had drawers and closets that were built into the walls much higher than I could reach. Thoughtful of her to put my clothes where I could easily reach them. I uncovered myself and sat up to leave the bed. That’s when I felt the pain in my fingers, as a small piece of thread caught the wound the queen harpy had made the previous night. Ouch! I’d forgotten about that as well. I looked at the damage. It must have been treated and cleaned as I slept, but the wound had reopened a little.
“Oh, let me take care of that for you!” the queen said, rolling back towards her bedstand, opening a drawer, and pulling out a tissue. She gently dabbed it on my fingers to catch the blood and pressed on it to stop the bleeding. “I wish monsters had healing magic. I would have had Sonya or Ilias heal this for you had I noticed it before everyone turned in for the night. I cleaned it for you. I’m sure they will heal it when you rejoin them in a short while.”
I winced a bit as she applied an antiseptic once she’d stopped the bleeding. As I said, not brave about pain. She smiled and put my fingers in her mouth.
“Mmmm….” She moaned as she lightly sucked. I immediately forgot the pain. She continued to pleasure my fingers with her tongue and lips. As I said before, a queen sucking on your fingers is equivalent to a human giving you a blowjob. I wondered if it was possible to orgasm from it. I knew that a succubus could achieve it. Alma Elma had demonstrated that once or twice.
I withdrew my fingers gently after about ten seconds, knowing that if I didn’t, she would keep on going until I did come, or she would escalate. “Better?” she asked. I nodded. “We may not have healing magic, but we are quite effective at relieving pain.”
I dressed myself, and watched as the queen also dressed. She was as fast as me when it came to getting decent. Part of it was that she didn’t wear much to begin with. Her feathers made extensive clothing unnecessary. I smiled as she finished by putting her tiara on. She must have been eager to get back to the real business of being a queen now that she wasn’t running an insane asylum as one of the inmates.
The queen curtsied to me and asked how she looked. I of course told her she looked every bit the monarch. That satisfied her, so she took my hand and led me down the stairs, in case there was any lingering unsteadiness. I felt fine, but decided to let her lead me. It seemed to make her feel better to be helping me.
Alice, Ilias, and Sonya were waiting at the ground level. To my surprise, they were not wearing any of their gear. In fact, Sonya was in a dress! Alice and Ilias wore their usual, but weren’t armed. I realized that I didn’t know where Angel Halo was. I’d have to make sure Alice had it before we left.
“What gives, guys?” I asked, hugging each one of them, even Ilias, who seemed genuinely happy to see me.
“We’ve been invited to the celebration at Happiness Village,” Sonya said. “How do I look?”
“Do you normally wear dresses?” I asked. “You don’t seem like the type.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
“Oh, sorry, I… meant nothing by it. You just seem like the strong warrior type to me. I’ve never seen you in anything except battle gear and your priestly robes.”
“No offense taken. But yes, I wear dresses, rarely, mainly for parties and non-temple related events. Luka always liked my outfits. Which means I bet you do as well.”
Luka had good taste. Sonya looked positively gorgeous in the dress. I also appreciated the lack of makeup. I was never a big fan of women dolling up for special events. Was Sonya makeup free because harpies didn’t wear makeup, or because she knew that her Luka preferred her to be natural? I wasn’t sure whether to mention that, since I STILL had no idea how to talk to women, especially human women. Sonya seemed to read my mind, though.
“Luka always preferred me without makeup,” Sonya said. “Do you think I look better that way too? Because I saw the queen wearing it. I’m sure she’d let me borrow some if you want me to add some color. I’m not a tomboy. I like dressing up sometimes.”
“The queen wears makeup?” I asked, confused. I hadn’t noticed.
“The right way to wear makeup is to make it seem that you aren’t wearing makeup at all,” the queen said. “If men don’t notice it, you did it right. But women always know.”
“You look amazing, Sonya, and yes, I prefer no makeup. A young girl like you, so pure looking….”
I realized I was talking like a creepy old guy. Sonya beamed, however, so I must have said the right thing.
The trip back to Happiness Village took only an hour. A particularly strong warrior harpy hoisted me up and flew me to the village. Other harpies did so with my companions, except for Ilias, who could fly on her own. I guessed that the other monsters were in the pocket castle. I wasn’t sure why we weren’t all in the pocket castle being flown by Ilias from place to place. Alice must not have trusted Ilias to not dump the castle into the ocean with everyone in it.
A few harpies had immediately flown to the village first thing in the morning, bearing the good news. I had slept until mid-afternoon, which was convenient for the village since it would take them until late afternoon to ready the feast. I didn’t have to ask why Alice and Ilias had agreed to further delay our quest. Food was involved. I worried about the clock, however. We had no idea how much time we had. Did we have months? Weeks? Days? Wouldn’t the white rabbit or Nero have told us if time was so short?
Our other companions emptied from the castle to join the party. Nuruko was of particular interest to the villagers and harpies alike, especially the warrior harpies, who I learned admired her the most because Nuruko had achieved the most “kills”, taking out forty-seven harpies during the assault on the tower. Sonya blushed when Nuruko said something. Sonya later told me that Nuruko had credited Sonya with watching her back, thus enabling Nuruko to rampage through the tower without suffering so much as a scratch. Our other companions had received a few minor cuts and bruises, and of course Pochi had been forced into critical ecstasy. Massive helpings of meat improved Pochi’s mood substantially, however.
I fondly remembered the first Happiness Village feast I’d been to, when I’d saved the men from a fate they hadn’t wanted to be saved from. Nevertheless, it had all worked out and no one was seriously hurt. I also fondly remembered my first time staring at Alice. She had insisted that I’d been staring at her boobs from the moment I’d met her, but that wasn’t true. The first time I’d been enraptured by her in an erotic way was when she had been licking honey off of her fingers with that foot long tongue of hers. Today there was no jar of happiness honey just for her. It would have been weird to stare at a small child anyway, even if I knew she was a mature adult in reality.
Also unlike the first time, alcohol was not needed to lubricate what had been a difficult agreement to come to due to the tension between the two villages. Not that there wasn’t a glorious amount of alcohol being consumed, but the atmosphere at this party was one of unrestrained joy at the return of the harpies. Finally, it wasn’t just Alice and I this time. My companions danced and frolicked along with the harpies and humans. Even Alice, who on my world never danced at these events, joined in, perhaps influenced by her childlike brain. She hadn’t been drinking, so it wasn’t the alcohol. The only person who wasn’t having much fun was Ilias, who shoved a truckload of food into her face, then got very, very drunk and stared at the goings on with an unreadable expression. I decided that I’d better find out where her head was at.
“Are you okay, Ilias?” I asked.”I saw that you enjoyed the food. Not into dancing?”
“Haven’t seen you dance yet,” Ilias replied, a little grumpy.
“I kinda like to be a wallflower at these things.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Ilias, are you upset by this? I know you don’t think humans and monsters should coexist.”
“Part of me is, sure,” she said, slurring her words a little. Still, she was holding her alcohol remarkably well. “I meant what I said about trying things your way. Seeing that other world…. It just became a lot more real for me. Was I actually going to go through with that? I think I’m getting drunk because I want to forget what I saw.”
“Is it working?” I asked.
“Not really. I couldn’t get drunk at all in my real body. I thought that having a childlike body would make it easy. Don’t get me wrong, I am really, really drunk. But not drunk enough.”
“Would you like to dance?”
“Would you like vomit on your chest?”
“That’s a fetish I haven’t gotten into yet.”
“Yet?” Ilias chuckled. That got a smile out of her. “Did you know there is a species of monster, an insect type, that vomits its digestive juices onto its prey? Feels incredible, but you only get to feel it once.”
“Such…. Scintillating party conversation you two are having,” the queen said, walking up to us with a glass of wine. “was the food to your liking, goddess?”
“You sure are polite,” Ilias replied, her grump returning.
“My politeness is not merely formal. You did me a kindness. If this is the Ilias that has returned to us, I believe you will find that many monsters will be willing to open their hearts to you.”
Ilias said nothing, but seemed to be contemplating the queen’s words. Seeing that for the moment she was getting no further conversation from Ilias, the queen extended her hand. “A dance?”
“I would be honored,” I said.
I had danced with the queen on my original adventure. She was as enchanting as the first queen had been. That got me to thinking. Variants of the same person are actually the same person, they simply had different experiences. What did that mean for my relationship here with Alice? Did it really matter if she was “my” Alice? At times I forgot that she wasn’t. My mind always came back to Sonya, however. When Sonya spoke to me, did she sometimes forget that I wasn’t “her” Luka? Or did she know full well that I wasn’t, and treat me like him anyway? I was increasingly wondering if the affection she showed me, however slight up to this point, was directed towards me intentionally. And if so, what did that mean? Should I attempt to rekindle my long lost love with Alice? Or should I keep my options open? Did I even have options? I had assumed that I would be gone when this mission was completed, probably to the land of the dead, to rejoin my loved ones. It was the fate that I’d wanted so badly. And yet I felt that I belonged here already. What if Alice was right and this wasn’t what I thought it was? What if I was staying? And what did that mean for this world’s Luka?
“You’re spacing out again,” the queen said. Her smile showed that she wasn’t offended. “Still, you dance well for someone who isn’t paying attention to the one he’s dancing with.”
“I was taught by a very special person,” I said. Tamamo had been the only decent dancer in the castle and had made a point to teach me how to dance after we were married. It was good to know that I had gotten so good at it that I could do it in my sleep.
“Someday I’d love to hear your story,” the queen said. “I’m sure it would be most fascinating. If you weren’t running around in such high circles I might ask for your hand in marriage. But I sense that the Monster Lord or perhaps even the goddess might pull rank on me.”
“The goddess? You really think so?”
“I must admit, actually meeting her frightens me. There is a coldness to her that I expected, but also a complexity that I did not. She is troubled ,and not just by her current situation. She is struggling with a moral quandary. And I suspect, feelings for someone. Unless those feelings are for a woman, you are the only likely subject of those feelings.”
“You can read people that well?” I asked. I looked over to where Ilias was sitting. She wasn’t watching me. She continued to brood, staring straight ahead, continuing to drink.
“She is a goddess, so I could be completely wrong. Be careful. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And she is no mere woman. While it might be flattering to have the Monster Lord and the goddess competing for your affections, such a situation could end very badly for you. Perhaps I should save you by marrying you right here and now, before their feelings reach the boiling point.”
I laughed. Wait, she wasn’t joking! “Do you really think it’s like that?”
“Of The Monster Lord, there is no doubt,” the queen said, looking over at Alice, who actually was glancing in our direction, although I saw no sign of the burning jealousy that had obsessed her at the midpoint of our first journey. “But the goddess…. It’s not as clear. That one has so many things on her mind that I could be misreading her entirely. I am merely a mortal. What mortal being can contemplate the mind of a goddess?”
“I guess I’d better start trying,” I said, now worried. I’d assumed Ilias was coming around to liking me, but if that involved romantic feelings…. Things could get complicated at best, ugly at worst.
“Then there is the human…” the queen said. Sonya was definitely looking our way, and not looking terribly happy. “Perhaps you should ask her to dance.”
“That situation is very, very complicated,” I said. “Remember how I said I was from another universe? I replaced a Luka of this universe when I arrived here. She loved that Luka.”
“Oh my!” the queen said. “That is a problem. She may associate you with the Luka she knew. I know nothing of alternate universes, but if you act like him as well as look like him….”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“And what of your heart?” she asked.
“That’s a conversation that will take awhile,” I chuckled.
“We shall have to have it while I’m nursing you back to health after my subjects and I have properly rewarded you for saving all of existence. You’ll have plenty of time then, believe me.”
The song ended and I bade the harpy queen farewell for the moment. I went straight for Sonya and offered her a dance. She smiled and accepted. The look in her eyes as we danced was unmistakable, even to someone as dense as me. She was definitely treating me as she had treated her Luka.
“Sonya, I’m not him,” I said gently. “He’s coming back, I’m sure of it.”
“I believe you,” Sonya replied. “I’m just enjoying this. Don’t worry, my eyes are fully open. I always wanted to dance with Luka like this. To hold him. To touch him. He was just clueless and I never had the nerve to make my feelings known. Do you think when he comes back….?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. He grew up here. He’s probably a lot more innocent than even I was at that age. He might be confused. It might be impossible at this point in his life to see you as anything but his best friend. Did he have any girlfriends?”
“Absolutely not! Although I guess I had something to do with that. Everyone in Iliasvile except him knows he’s mine until he makes it clear that I’m just a friend. I don’t know what I’d do if he rejected me.”
“Luka loves you, Sonya, of that you can be sure. I love you and I just met you. Whether that means he can love you in the romantic sense, I don’t know. I wish I could reassure you. But what I do know for sure is that he won’t step on your heart. He’ll always be loyal to you and value your friendship, just as you’ve been loyal to him. He’ll be thrilled to know that you wanted to bash my head in in the hopes that your Luka would pop out of it.”
Sonya laughed. I wondered if just as Alice had an automatic connection to me despite never having met me, if perhaps there were worlds in which Luka and Sonya fell in love, and that somehow affected me, even over the vast distances. I’d never fallen for a human before. And I hadn’t fallen for Sonya. But there was definitely a small spark, and I wasn’t sure where else it could be coming from. She wasn’t my type, nor did I feel that I’d developed an emotional connection. But somehow, holding her close, dancing with her…. It felt as if it was something I should have done, or maybe even had done, in another life.
I caught a glance at Alice again. Now she was definitely looking my way and didn’t look happy at all. Damn. How does one handle this sort of thing? I remembered that as tolerant as my Alice had become about other monsters, she had expressly forbidden me to have any romantic or sexual relations with humans. Was my dancing with Sonya making her jealous in a way that being gangbanged by imps or talked into a sexual encounter in the kitchen with a rat didn’t?
I looked at Ilias. She was watching us as well, although her expression was different. Instead of brooding, she was watching with interest. Did she like the idea of Luka with Sonya, or was she happy that we were upsetting Alice? At least this wasn’t pissing her off as well. Perhaps the queen was wrong about her.
Our dance ended and I spent the rest of the night mingling with villagers, especially ones that I knew from my own world. I charmed the pants off of them by knowing little details of their lives that I couldn’t possibly have known. They probably assumed that I’d been prepped by the queen like a good diplomat. I was grateful that credit was being shared. The first time I had been the center of attention as the hero who had saved the men of the village. This time I was just one hero of many to the humans. I danced with some of the young human ladies(Alice didn’t seem to mind those dances), and stuffed myself with entirely too much food. When the night was over, Alice placed the pocket castle on a picnic table and we all went inside for the night. I asked her why the table didn’t collapse under the weight of the castle, since it couldn’t be lifted due to being the weight of an actual castle. Alice explained that it was magic and left it at that, saying nothing more to me. Ilias, despite her drunkenness, became cerebral and theorized that the magic worked one way when someone picked it up who wasn’t an authorized user, but another way while it rested on surfaces untouched.
I slept in my bed alone that night. Alice didn’t come to my room. Was she angry? Or had it simply been too soon since she had last fed? I sincerely hoped that we didn’t have a problem.
- 8
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Luka's Story-Paradox