Trouble With Horns

** Taylor **

Some part of me was hoping that we’d end up cuddling in the night, but that turned out to be a pipe dream. I did get to wake up to a worried and anxious pair of eyes staring at me however. I’d given April a T-shirt and a pair of old running shorts to sleep in, and she was practically swimming in the T-shirt. It was falling so far off one shoulder she was almost flashing me.

“Taylor!” she blurted as soon as my eyes focused on her. “I’m so so so sorry for last night! I didn’t mean it! I was just really… I don’t know. I feel funny and I need to go home and get in Cora but I don’t want to go into Cora on my own anymore so will you play with me?”

Her words came at me in a rush, and I blinked several times in confusion as my barely awake brain parsed her words.

“Uh yeah, sure. We can make a double stream of it and get extra views and stuff,” I nodded, once I’d understood what she was saying. “You don’t have to worry about the kiss though, it was nice.”

“Nice?” she asked in a tiny voice, her eyes going wider still.

“Yeah. Kissing is fun, you were fun to kiss, the kiss was nice,” I said matter of factly.

“Mow,” she mumbled, staring rather blatantly at my lips.

“Maybe later,” I laughed ruffling her hair. “If we’re going to be logging into Cora to play together, we should get in now and meet up so we can start our streams in the afternoon when people like to watch.”

“People like to watch in the afternoon?” she asked, latching on to the streamer talk.

I nodded as I pulled myself out of bed and got to work finding something to wear on my way back to my apartment. “Yeah, people coming home from work or school like to watch something. It’s that four in the afternoon time slot. They want something relaxing to watch like the slow pace of a Cora stream. If you start streaming around that time you get some great numbers.”

“I didn’t know that… I just leave my stream running most of the time, apart from when I sleep,” April murmured thoughtfully.

“Maybe I can impart some knowledge into that pretty little noggin of yours,” I smiled over at her. 

She was so damn pretty. She’s chosen her shaping well, that was for sure. It was almost better knowing she chose to look like that. It was like clothing, if you saw someone wearing a certain band name or whatever, you knew they liked both the band and the style. It told you something about them. With shaping, you knew that the person resonated with that look, they weren’t just thrown into it by the lottery of birth.

“That would be so cool! I didn’t even think about the streaming side, I just wanted to hang out with you,” she said happily, bouncing out of bed and turning her back to get changed.

“Aw. You’re sweet,” I smiled, earning a blush from her that I could see in the tips of her ears.

She didn’t reply, turning slightly to do that lost-for-words deer-in-headlights stare she had whenever I said something like that.

“So, where should I find you in Cora?” I asked to bring her back from wherever she’d gone.

****

I wasn’t going to find her in time for the afternoon prime time, but we might be able to catch the after dinner crowd if I hurried. The road was a winding one, descending from the highlands in a series of twisting turns and switchbacks that would have had me hurling out a window if I’d been going down in a car. Thankfully, I didn’t need to take the road, at least not often. Because just like my sister, I had wings.

I was a Highborn Aurelling, which was a rather pretentious way of saying I was an angel. I had glowing eyes, slightly luminescent red-gold hair and similarly coloured feathered wings. The wings could change size, from as long as my arms to double that, but I couldn’t get rid of them entirely. It was a bit of a pain, but I’d learned to deal with it for that shock value when a heavily armoured knight dropped out of the sky into a group of enemies. Satisfying on a base level every time.

The war that I’d become embroiled in was a bitter, dirty one. Originally my guild, called the Ravensmiths, had been attempting to clear a raid in the Corugh highlands, when some shady shit had started going down. We hadn’t been directly involved with it when it happened, but word was that Pagutum had something over the royals in the enemy Duchy of Chigmeinon.

Either way, it had become very difficult to clear the raid with the whole highlands in turmoil and people killing each other all over the place. So we’d decided to take matters into our own hands. Us Ravensmiths were a bit of a unique guild, at least as far as Cora went. When we’d all made the decision to move to Cora as our main game, we’d also decided we were all going to play Highborn Aurellings.

We were essentially the lords of this war. The Corugh highlands was essentially a huge, almost terraced mountain range that had been created by some long ago cataclysm. While all the other little guilds and armies clambered around on the mountainside, we soared, riding the currents and bringing death from above. We dropped down upon our enemies like the fist of the goddess to smash our foes, and we were not at all that subtle about it.

My destination, and where the ship would have dropped Millie and the others off, was the port city of Vallas. Dawn and Tami wouldn’t be logging in for a few more days yet, they were too busy canoodling, so it was just going to be Millie and I going off on adventures. This was more than okay with me, some alone time with the adorable and hyper intelligent little minx would be great fun.

Millie sent me a friend invite as soon as she got in, while I was still halfway to her, and we partied up so I could home in on her. I was very much looking forward to making an entrance. She was going to meet me at the gates to make it all easier. I started my stream around the four oclock time anyway, taking the time to talk to my viewers as I flew.

“Hey everyone, Shades here! How are you all doing?” I asked the little light that showed where my camera was.

Several of my regulars piped up with greetings, and I engaged in a little banter with them before getting to my announcement.

“Hey everyone, so I don’t know if you’ve heard of her or not, but I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the streamer called Alchemilla in real life. She’s an absolute sweetie, even if she snores,” I grinned, giving the stream a wink.

Let them speculate over that comment.

As my chat blew up with questions, I laughed and continued, “We’re going to be hanging out for the next few days until my twin sister and her girlfriend log back on. Forming a ragtag party after that, then we’re off to get up to no good! Can’t wait, speaking for myself!”

Lots of questions from chat, a few people curious who my sister was. One question needed to be addressed quickly though.

“No, no! Millie is most definitely not my sister, I just said that she wasn’t! No, but my sister is someone who’s also pretty famous within Cora. I think you’re all going to love the team up,” I grinned. “If you want to get all detective mode on me, we look very similar, although we aren’t identical twins.”

And then they were off! They loved it when I threw them a mystery to solve, diving into a heated argument about who I looked like. I saw Tami’s name pop up a few times, but she wasn’t the first choice. Oh this was going to be so much fun.

It took until around five in the afternoon to make it to Millie, and she’d been messaging my head off the whole time. Something about a special plant that grew up in the mountains that she wanted. Well, what the pretty girl wants, she gets.

I spotted her sitting on a fallen tree down below me, and began to circle and drop altitude before my final descent. When I’d bled enough height, I folded my wings and dove. I was no Tami, with the ability to tell the laws of physics to go fuck themselves, but I was a much better flier than her. Which meant I could make a landing that didn’t result in my death or a massive explosion, or both.

I waited until the last moment, flaring my wings and landing in a crouch before the little Millie and her funny rogue cloak. I might have flared my wings a little wider than was needed for dramatic effect, so sue me. If you asked, I would say it was for the stream, and not to impress a pretty girl.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed breathlessly as I gave her a cocky smirk.

“Hey, long time no see, cutie,” I flirted shamelessly.

“B-but we saw each other just today… I slept next to you! Mow!” she said, furrowing her brow in confusion. Oh dear, both of our streams were going to go mental over that one.

“It was a… a line or whatever, you know, like I couldn’t just land and say Hello,” I laughed, moving forward to pull her off the log and into a hug.

“Oh!” she squeaked, her big eyes looking up at me. Fuck, those eyes. I was going to have dreams about making them flutter in ecstasy. Damn, I was being horny. Control yourself woman!

Changing the subject so she’d stop staring at me like that, I asked, “So where are we headed? You wanted that plant from up in the mountains?”

She seemed to latch onto that, her eyes getting a little smaller as she switched to thinking about something she knew about. “Yeah! It’s near the Falconry, that big rock. At least, the internet said it was a big rock that birds roost on. Doesn’t have falcons though, more dumb names from the locals I guess. Why do things always get boring names?”

“No idea, I know what you mean though, and where you mean. I know the way… although I don’t think we can fly there. I can carry myself, but not much else. My armour weighs me down, even while it’s stowed in my inventory,” I told her.

I normally wore the chunkiest suit of armour you’ve ever seen, but that wasn’t the greatest for moving around in, or for hugging people, so I liked to keep it off unless I needed it. Equipping from the inventory was a wonderful and instantaneous thing. I kept my big gambeson on though, which still afforded me some protection until the armour was on. I’d gotten pretty good at putting it on that way even when ambushed.

“That’s okay! Flying is scary… Tami carried me that way one time, through a forest, and it was… scary,” she said, giving a shudder.

“I remember watching that, it was pretty funny from the stream’s perspective,” I grinned.

“It was not funny,” she pouted up at me from her much shorter height.

“Oh, it was definitely funny, your squeals were just adorable,” I teased, fighting a grin.

“My s-squeals?” she gaped. “Did I squeal? Really? That is so embarrassing!”

“You’ll have to go back and find out if I’m lying or not now won’t you?” I laughed, then motioned towards the road. “Shall we go?”

“Yeah, let’s go before my chat laughs at me even more,” she pouted again and shook a finger at me. “No more teasing!”

“Oh, if the lady says so,” I winked, giving her a perfect court bow. I was a knight after all.

“D-don’t do that either!” she exclaimed, her voice rising several octaves in pitch.

“Right, no bowing either. Chat, can you keep a list for me?” I asked my stream camera.

“You are just… the worst,” Millie grumbled, her little head bobbing as she led the way down the road in front of me.

I laughed. “That’s me!”