Enlightenment Through BDSM

The rest of the night was, in a word, lovely. Kalia and I laid there for a while with her arms around me, my eyes desperately trying not to wander and sneak a peak of her, but it wasn’t long before she got up to finish getting ready for bed, putting on her underwear again before heading outside.

I decided to try something myself as she did that, thew opposite of what she’d taught me earlier, pulling out my yellow sundress. It wasn’t exactly pajamas, but for the purposes of just throwing something on to go outside, it was far more convenient than my fighting gear. I got ready for bed as well, noting that Emi had retreated back into her tent, and then Kalia and I went back to bed.

The next morning was when I started getting actually worried. Kalia and I awoke at sunrise, like we’d all planned the night before, but even after packing up and eating our breakfast of bread and cheese, there was still no sign of Emi.

“Come on out,” Kalia eventually said. “We’re not gonna kill you.” 

“That’s just what a killer would say!”

“And what someone who isn’t a killer would say, son it doesn’t maker a difference. But I need you alive for the job, so you know I’m not going to.”

“Are you gonna hurt me though?”

“No promises either way.”

It took Emi a while to think, it seemed, but eventually she came out, loose pajamas, messy hair, fear in her eyes. “I promise I didn’t mean it. Didn’t realize you two were like that, you know?”

“Like what?” Kalia asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“Uhm, girlfriends? Kinky? Kinky girlfriends?”

Kalia gave her a blank stare.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it! I just thought you shared a tent because you were broke, you know?”

“Not helping,” I muttered, seeing the vein pulsing on Kalia’s forehead.

“Right, right, well, you have my blessing! And to make up for it…”

I’m not quite sure what was going through my mind, what gears were turning as the mousegirl grabbed both the hem of her shirt and the waistband of her pajamas, pulling them up and down respectively, revealing smaller, perky breasts up top with button nipples, hard in the morning air, and a trimmed bush down below. She held the position for only a second as Kalia and I stood there, listlessly in shock before she pulled her clothes back down. There was only the tiniest hint of blush as she turned away. “Think we’re even now; I’ll be ready in a bit!”

Neither Kalia nor I spoke for a while, both of us staring at the spot Emi where Emi had just been. I’m pretty sure Kalia was stunned from pure confusion, but me… God, that was the first time I’d seen a girl naked since arriving, since inheriting my new body, and it felt… so different. There was arousal, sure, because of course there would be, Emi was more than attractive after all, but it was a softer arousal, an admiration combined with attraction, for her attitude, her boldness…

“Well, I was going to figure out a different way to punish her,” Kalia eventually said, picking up her dishes and storing them away, “but she’s probably punished herself enough just now.”

“Yeah,” I said, still staring at that spot, imagining her still there.

As we finished getting packed up and my mind cleared, I was just happy things seemed to be smoothed over. I put Emi’s backpack and other things away in my inventory even though it was still a slowish process for me, relieved I didn’t have to physically lug it everywhere anymore like Emi did her much larger alchemy bag, and we were off. 

Moving away from the city even more, the terrain changed, becoming flatter, more rocky, with vibrant red boulders and similarly red dirt. Trees, grass and flowers disappeared the further we went, their smells being replaced by arid dust, and the breeze intensifying as the barriers to it fell away. It was only a little after lunch we came to an offshoot in the road with a sign pointing down it that said “Wailing Caves.”

“That way,” Kalia said, veering off slightly.

“Why is it called that?” I asked, suddenly even more trepidatious than before.

“Prolly the wind!” Emi said. “Or ghosts! But the flyer would’ve probably mentioned that.

The wind did seem a good bet by this point, as dust was flying everywhere, almost creating wails on its own as the breeze changed directions, picked up and slowed down in speed. Still, ghosts… “What if the client lied? What if it’s not goblins? What if it’s ghosts and goblins!”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Kalia said. “The Guild would have their heads. Plus, different monster types very rarely mix, and when it does happen it’s usually a very serious problem, way more than our party could handle. I’ve heard rare tales of clients slightly underselling the danger of a job before to try and save a penny, but nothing that extreme, because you just aren’t going to  get the help you need.”

“Also, the cave’s probably been named that for centuries,” Emi added. “Probably back when ghosts weren’t real, just in our imaginations.”

When ghosts weren’t real? I knew the two of them had said not all monsters had always existed, and I kind of got that, but wasn’t it strange that they had the idea of ghosts before there actually were any?

“I think that’s it up there,” Kalia said, pointing to an outcropping of rocks with what looked like a camp around it. “We’ll see the client, get their assurance there’s no ghosts, and charge the hell out of them if there are.

I didn’t have the heart to mention that the payment amount wasn’t why ghosts were turning me off from the idea…