The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'
Chapter 133 - Your Love Must Be A Salty-Sweet Base... As It’s Neutralizing The Acid Of My Regrets~

Chapter 133: Chapter 133 - Your Love Must Be A Salty-Sweet Base... As It’s Neutralizing The Acid Of My Regrets~

The steady rhythm of Qatrand’s chest rising and falling, as fingers continued with gentle strokes through Elua’s hair, both pushed away and eroded millennia of doubt. For minutes, the ancient cultivator allowed herself to simply exist in the warmth of her beloved husband-wife’s arms. It was so comfortable and relaxing that she didn’t bother to fight away any of her idle thoughts.

’It’s fine to think of *things*, as long as I don’t actually do them~’

Each soft scratch of nails on the brunette’s scalp felt like it scraped away more and more - of her worry, her urges, and her shame. The swordswoman sucked in a deep breath and sighed before her low voice rumbled out. She hated to ruin the nice mood, but she didn’t want to let a question linger in her thoughts.

"El. What eventually happened to that person? The one you... influenced."

The heavy question hung in the otherwise quiet room. A small set of fingers tightened their grip on the back of a black blazer. The pleasant cocoon of the embrace which the tall girl provided... now seemed to demand more truths she had long buried. Worse, the illusionist could tell that her choosing not to answer would be fine with Qat.

’I truly can’t tell if she’s wonderful for letting me decide or cruel for knowing I couldn’t leave her wondering...’

Slowly, Elua pulled upright just enough to meet the Yecine’s gaze. The pigeon-blue eyes that stared back at her held no judgment - only patient curiosity. There was truly no eloquent way to put things... and she could feel her resolve deserting her by the moment.

"I... I left him. Once I realized what I’d done couldn’t be fixed. I wasn’t patient enough to live with my mistake or pretend that I felt the love I once did."

"I see."

The teenager responded politely, but truly couldn’t understand. She tried to imagine the Goltbred girl changing in some way that she would reject... and failed. She pushed past that and tried imagining what she would do if for some reason her feelings for El were gone. It didn’t go any better.

"Was that it?"

The questioning voice was soft and carefully neutral. She hadn’t wanted to imply any blame when she couldn’t even equate things with her own experiences. Yet, she could feel her wife’s body tense against hers despite the care.

The reborn cultivator made use of the tolerance afforded to her and buried the side of her face against her spouse once more. The touch, the scent, and the sounds were all being recorded! She hoped to acclimatize herself to it all, so that someday soon she might sleep next to her peacefully.

"No. Favors earned previously and promises of debt were traded to have a Defier with a more focused Astralism remove me from his older memories. He probably spent his life unsettled and unhappy. Drawn to something that was missing."

The heiress traced absent patterns on the stiff lower back as she wrestled with the memories of her choices. It was easy to incorrectly think that a single action was just like a solitary stone stacked in a pile of them. She once believed that each choice - bad or good - were simple to place on a ’scale’ in order to find which side outweighed the other.

But some choices had a pull to them that affected the weight of the next. In this case, all subsequent ones sometimes felt heavier. Some of the choices also grew lighter with time, perspective, or repetition. The ancient cultivator eventually decided that following the path of her instincts was still safer than second guessing herself constantly.

’I wouldn’t have survived long enough to fail to ascend... and there is a chance I wouldn’t have ended up here, now, without doing so.’

When she finally spoke, her monotone didn’t do the weight of ’regret’ that rumbled in her spirit justice. Because she *hadn’t* listened to the instinct inside, telling the woman she once was, that using her spirit in that way was *wrong*. Her gut was ignored and it led to those consequences.

"I can hope that wasn’t the case - that he found some measure of solace or found another that loved him... but the truth is I never dared to return and see. Or to have anyone else go look. Or even talk about this with anyone ever again."

A shudder ran through her small frame that was almost a relief. She admittedly loved to brag - and she didn’t often mind sharing stories about failures when they taught something - but this one had been buried through more than a half dozen long term spouses. Nothing about it seemed to teach anything other than how selfish she was.

"The person I was indebted to only asked one thing. That I never show my face in front of them ever again. We weren’t exactly friends, but what she saw I did to him made her an enemy. I got the feeling that if she thought I could be killed with her set of abilities, she would have done so."

Qatrand unconsciously tightened her embrace. Whether what El had done in the past was really so abominable or not - only the idea of someone trying to harm the cute girl... or even the Acid Tongued ’Villain’ in that set of stories, had actually tugged at her. Part of her felt this was a kind of problem.

’She did warn me not to let her get away with everything. Or rather... the illusion said that she would try to if I let her?’

The blonde’s brow pinched as she opened her mouth to speak, but only hummed a noncommittal response. The enormity of the idea of living for so long - or of making choices with consequences that spanned centuries or more... was definitely beyond her comprehension.

However, the tale certainly left the usual feeling of awe as well as a strange sort of sadness. The only way she could describe it was an empathy for the burden her wife carried. The Yecine sincerely wanted to make it lighter, if she could.

"If I’m speaking plainly, I can’t imagine making those choices... of living with them for so long. But I do know a little about keeping things inside and not telling others."

She paused, then chuckled. Something about speaking to her wife this way felt like she was being haughty. There was probably nothing that she knew or experienced that had not been seen by the reborn cultivator.

"I may not understand fully, but when I’m here I’ll always listen. I understand that you’re afraid of me dying. We have that in common, El... though it’s simply harder for me to picture it even happening to you."

The Goltbred made the decision to sit back up and look in her eyes again. As she did so, a hand caught her face and directed it so that their lips met for a much too brief kiss. She didn’t even have the time to shut her eyes!

"You know... not that I enjoy the idea of you getting along better with anyone else, but you probably should have told your past partners that story. If they couldn’t understand and feel how much your mistake affected you..."

Qat trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid. It felt rude to call them unworthy. She hadn’t known them... and more importantly her El had chosen them. Insulting those past partners would be insulting her wife - and also somewhat insulting herself!

Mint eyes shone with amusement.

’A person can’t be this adorable, can they?’

The small girl had seemingly been kissed in a spurt of theoretical jealousy. While none of her partners had ever liked comparative stories... all of them thought that they were the ’best’ - which, admittedly, was *always* true in the mind of the illusionist. Never more so than now did she feel that it was practically a law!

"No, I’m rather glad that I never did. The choice not to speak of it placed me here with you. All of my choices did. Would it alarm you if I said I would go back and do it to him again, if it was necessary for us to meet?"

Her Qat was the best. She would carve it into her very bones!

’Or maybe... *eventually* let it soak into my whole body. Her lips, fingers, tongue, skin-’

The rising ’hunger’ and ’evil thoughts’ led to a calloused palm to grip on her forehead once again. This, at least, the swordswoman was growing confident enough to admonish. It was also a much more immediate ’threat’ than an imaginary scenario of her El re-commiting an apparent kind of atrocity in the name of her love.

"I’m sorry, but you know I’m not very good with hypotheticals. I trust you *would* try every other way possible first before resorting to that kind of behavior. Right?"

"R-right. Of course."

It was the blonde’s turn to look at the other girl with nothing but disbelief. She hadn’t even tried to hide the ’insincerity’ in her spirit.

"That is, I will now? I did say if it was *necessary*! Naturally that means that I’ve either exhausted all other options or have some other very *solid* proof that it is the case. It’s not like I would listen to the first Clairvoyant that tried to tell me what to do..."

The way she trailed off suspiciously and tried to tilt her head under the hand made it clear there was another story there, but Qat had her fill of the past for now. Her fingers trailed and brushed through her wife’s hair as she looked around at the ’unsafe’ environment.

’How does one even go about fixing something like this?’