Ritsu did not immediately rush out to go look for Kiri. Instead, the fox managed to wrench himself out of his own head just as Alys and I were finishing our desserts. He thanked us, then bustled off upstairs, where visitors or townsfolk who still didn’t have a home of their own could stay.

  Neither Alys nor I tried to stop or question him. Me, because I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t grossly overstepped already. Alys, because from the way she was watching him, my dragoness was letting him sink or swim on his own merit. I knew she would be there to prop Kiri up if the fox really did muddle things.

  “Well, this went better than I expected,” I admitted, finishing off my pancakes and playfully eying Alys’ plate.

  She not-so-playfully narrowed her eyes and hugged the plate closer to her chest. It was almost empty, despite the fact that we’d split the desserts seventy to thirty percent in her favor.

  “Hrrrrm. You didn’t try to poison him, and he didn’t try to set you on fire.” She paused. “It wouldn’t have worked since I’m here, but at least he didn’t try.”

  “You had so little faith in me that I could handle this properly?”

  “You can be diplomatic. Can be.” She sent me a dazzling smile, one that never failed to make me feel like she had caught me up in her arms and launched us into the sky once again.

  “How rude!” I dramatically exclaimed, pretending like I wasn’t daydreaming about finding more opportunities to go flying with my dragoness. Really, it was something we should have indulged a long time ago, but it felt like things just kept happening. Any moments of peace we snatched away from the world were best spent lazily cuddling. “I’ll have you know I’m very socially aware!”

  “Aware? Maybe. Capable of acting on that awareness?” A laugh rumbled out of her as her eyes sparkled with amusement. “I’m not so sure.”

  I pretended to pout, then gave into laughter when she leaned over like she was going to kiss me… only to nip my cheek ever so gently instead.

  I ignored the flush spreading over my face as I stood up and offered her my hand. “Come on. We should go see that seamstress, finally. I refuse to let anything else distract us again. I will get a proper coat to wear in this horrid weather.”

  My dragoness smirked. “You can just stick close to me, you know. I’m more than enough to keep you warm.”

  The look in her eyes and the way she pulled my hand closer, practically clinging to me, made my cheeks redden further.

  “I thought you agreed with my idea of altering some of those clothes of mine,” I reminded her. “The ones you liked the feel of. Didn’t you want to ask the seamstress about fixing them into something you could wear?”

  “Oh! Right! We should hurry.”

  She dropped the smoldering eyes and the teasing grin so quickly, I was almost startled enough to trip when she tugged me towards the door, trapping my arm against her side as she pulled.

  “Oh, I see how it is…” I grumbled, much to my dragoness’ mirth.

  I did love how the rumbling sensation of her laugh traveled up my arm and into my chest, though.

  —

  I hadn’t been sure at first that I would be able to find someone in Swiftband to make a warmer coat for me. Then, when I’d offhandedly mentioned it to Alys, she had assured me that someone who could handle clothing had joined the settlement drive.

  Our plans to visit this seamstress had been interrupted so often, it hardly seemed possible that we were actually on our way. In the end, it really wasn’t difficult for us to find her… even if Alys expressed confusion over who she actually was.

  “I never met her,” my dragoness explained. “I mean, she traveled here with us, and I did build a home for her, but I never met her face to face. She traveled in a completely enclosed carriage, and then when we could no longer travel that way, she always wore these large, voluminous robes. When we talked about how she wanted her home set up, I had to speak to her through a closed door.”

  “That’s… odd. What kind of requests did she have? For her home, I mean.”

  “Those kinds of requests,” my dragoness rumbled, stabbing a finger in the direction of the house we were approaching.

  A relatively simple, two-story house… which had absolutely no windows.

  “That’s odd,” I repeated, starting to feel just a tiny bit concerned over the quality of work this seamstress could produce.

  Then again, I was proof enough that the quality of one’s products had no true relation to one’s eccentricities.

  “Should we knock, then?” I asked somewhat hesitantly, when we were finally in front of the door.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  There was a large wooden sign, likely Alys’ work, that proclaimed the building as ‘Florette’s Boutique.’ I admired the pretty engravings of various wildflowers all along the edges of the sign, but I also noted this was the only indication that the building was a shop rather than just a home.

  “I suppose so. Arandel got a bit dodgy when I mentioned we were planning to visit this place a while ago,” Alys rumbled suspiciously. “She seemed amused.”

  “Well… nothing for it, then.” I shrugged and knocked thrice, sharply yet not too violently.

  Nothing happened.

  “Hrm. Let me try,” my dragoness insisted after several long moments. She banged on the door a little harder than I had. When that produced no results, she pounded a bit harder still.

  I frowned. “Maybe we should just —”

  “I’m coming! I’m coming!” insisted a voice from within, though it was so high-pitched that I barely heard it.

  Alys and I exchanged glances, then focused on the door.

  Vaguely, I could hear someone moving inside the shop, along with a sudden bang and a string of muffled curses before the door was finally torn open.

  “What? Did I forget to do a delivery again? Or is there some kind of an emergency, or —”

  The tumble of words suddenly cut off as the speaker stopped rubbing her eyes and saw Alys. The entire body of the seamstress froze. A startled, dare I say scared, little hiccup escaped her.

  Knowing my dragoness, she normally would have moved to reassure someone who had that sort of reaction to her, but we were both a bit too busy staring to do much else. The seamstress we had decided to visit was a rather unusual sight.

  Mostly because she was a moth.

  That was a touch reductive, actually. The woman, and she was definitely woman, had a humanoid figure. A rather lush figure, currently concealed only by some sort of pale silken night dress which covered everything important and did little else.

  She also had two pairs of wings, covered with powdery scales that sparkled in the sunlight. These wings were currently draped over her hips like a secondary dress. Her body was covered in a layer of fur that looked startlingly soft. It was thicker around her limbs, reminding me a little of poofy sleeves and pants. From the glimpses her current attire gave us, this fur was only lightly present on her face and down the front of her body.

  Finally, and I found this as startling as the rest of her features, she actually had two pairs of arms. All four limbs ended in long, completely black fingers that reminded me of claws.

  Her large, glimmering eyes with silver irises were still locked on my mate in an expression of utter horror. Her two fluffy white antenna fluttered furiously where they peeked out of her darker silver tresses.

  “P-Please don’t eat me! I’m easily flammable! I’ll just turn to ashes immediately, and I won’t be tasty!” our seamstress finally squeaked out.

  Then, apparently remembering that she could, in fact, just slam the door in our faces, she proceeded to do just that.

  We stood there for far too long. Both of us were stewing in the realization that we had not only woken up the poor woman, but we had also terrified her out of her mind, without ever meaning to do so at all.

  “So… I don’t think I’m getting that coat today,” I hedged, glancing at my dragoness from the corner of my eye.

  Her expression was a strange combination of flabbergasted, amused, and insulted, all at once.

  “Why does she think I want to eat her?”

  “Do you? Ow!”

  My question earned me a punch to the shoulder. This was fair, but it also brought us no closer to solving the mystery of the town seamstress’s fear, or how exactly we ought to approach commissioning her to make the clothes we wanted.

  Unanimously, we decided to beat a retreat for the day, defeated by sheer awkwardness and social anxiety.

  —

  The next day, we came no closer to figuring out what we should do about the town seamstress. Alys’ parents were absolutely no help. Amara thought the whole thing was hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing, while Soren quietly suggested that we should ‘find a way to apologize to the poor dear.’

  We didn’t find a way to do that, but at least we weren’t the only confused couple in Swiftband. Kiri and Ritsu seemed to be suffering from terminal confusion of their own, since neither of them had yet made a move.

  At least Amara was continuing to work her charms on Kiri. The Winter fae spent the day in the company of the two draconians, still looking vaguely shell-shocked to have someone mothering her so faithfully.

  Soren, meanwhile, had plenty to do. On top of his newly assigned task to take care of the mutated manchineel grove, a task he’d received from his wife and was approaching with gusto, the human was also getting back into training.

  I knew this because he approached me sheepishly that same evening to request something that could help with muscle pain, and maybe something that helped build muscle, too. He also asked that I keep what he was doing from his wife and daughter for the time being. Apparently, he’d not been actively training his combat skills for some time, even if he’d always tried to stay in shape.

  I promised that much to him easily. We all went to sleep that night at least somewhat content, especially since Amara had pulled off quite a feat in making Kiri look much more relaxed and healthy.

  With how the day had gone, Alys and I expected the next morning to be a simple, fulfilling continuation of our routine. Instead, we were woken up by loud, tittering laughter that reminded me a little of a tea kettle insisting it be removed from the fire.

  “Hrrrrrrmmmmm,” Alys whined unhappily. When I glanced out the window to note the sun was barely coming up, I had to agree with her. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m feeling a sense of kinship with that poor seamstress right now,” I grumbled. My mind and body both screamed at me to ignore the world in favor of luxuriating in Alys’ warmth and softness, but I tried to stretch in preparation of getting up. “I guess we should go see what’s happening?”

  “I guess…”

  She yawned, her jaws stretching open in a way that might have alarmed me if I didn’t know my dragoness would never hurt me. (Unless I really deserved it, that is.)

  Voices continued to reach us from downstairs. Two of them were far too enthusiastic for the early hour, while a dry drawl from a third speaker snuck through their cacophony.

  A drawl that I was quite familiar with.

  “Wait, is that Grandmother? Is she back?” My tone betrayed my excitement, making Alys glare at me playfully.

  “You know, sometimes I think you like my grandmother more than me. And yes, I think she…” Alys stiffened. “Wait. That laugh. That means —”

  Distracted as I was, I caught the patter of feet on the stairs just before they reached the top. I quickly pulled the blankets tighter in around us as the tittering voice rang out in our bedroom.

  “Why, mistress Alys! You are awake, I see! What? Don’t give me that look. I hear that’s how you prefer to be addressed by kobolds these days,” the slightly squeaky voice insisted.

  My dragoness groaned, covering her face with her hands.

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