Trouble With Horns

** Taylor **

I woke to Millie’s wriggling as she tried and failed to be patient while waiting for me to wake up. I could see it in her eyes as she peered at me from behind sleepy lids. She looked adorable in the morning, as I’d discovered outside of the game yesterday. Something about her uncoordinated sleepy bumbling sent warm affection through my heart.

“Hi,” she whispered, her face very close to mine all of a sudden. My, someone was eager this morning.

Without even waiting for a reply, she was kissing me all over again, like we hadn’t spent the entirety of last night making out. We hadn’t gone as far as sex though, since she wasn’t ready for that. Her kisses were so warm and caring too, as well as just being sexual simply because I found her incredibly attractive. She kept this one short, at least compared to previously, but it was incredibly nice to wake up to nevertheless.

“Hey to you too,” I smiled as we parted from the liplock. “I take it that you’re feeling good about things then?”

“Yes! Is it okay to want to kiss you so much since we’ve only really met in person for like three days?” she asked, suddenly looking nervous. “Cos I mean, I can stop. I can slow down if you want or whatever, it’s just really hard to hold myself back.”

“Sapphic relationships tend to move rather quickly, don’t worry about it,” I chuckled, giving her a peck on the tip of her nose. “We can just take things as fast or as slow as we feel like. I mean, we’re already two girls, so why stop here with breaking all the straights’ rules? We already kissed before the end of the first date too. We’ll probably have the heteropolice busting down our doors any second now.”

“Wait, romantic stuff works differently between girls like that?” she asked, her face crinkling in confusion. “That makes no sense.”

“I’m joking little Millie,” I laughed. “We’ve actually spent almost seventy two hours together, which is a lot of time. By normal dating standards, that must add up to like six or seven dates. I mean, it’s probably silly, but I think raw hours are the most relevant metric, if you want to use metrics, rather than the number of days you’ve seen each other, or dates or whatever.”

“I don’t think I care about metrics, at least this one time,” she sighed, putting her head down onto my shoulder.

“Neither,” I hummed happily, putting my arms around her and pulling us tight together.

It was almost strange to be in a relationship again, if that’s what you could call this. It had been a while since my last one, and that had ended rather badly. The only man I’d actually given a real shot, and I hadn’t told anyone but Tami, in case mother started getting… intense, about my dating a man. A man who could get me pregnant. Ugh.

He’d taken my attraction to women well at the beginning, in that typical way that men often viewed two women together. He’d thought it was an opportunity for a threesome or whatever. Yet another guy who didn’t consider the fact that love between women wasn’t just something that happened in porn.

Then he’d started to get it, he’d started to realise that women were rivals for my affections, just as other men were. Not that I would have done anything as low as cheat on him, but he didn’t seem to understand that. From that point on, I was jealously questioned about every female friend I had, and it only got worse from there.

Since that point I had retreated from getting into romantic engagements, preferring to guard my heart and stay single, rather than risk it again. Until Millie came along. There was just no way I could see her doing anything awful. How could this bumbling little baby-sapphic do anything other that just be good? I could trust this girl with my heart, I could feel it, even this early.

“Do we talk about this on stream?” she asked, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“Up to you,” I said. “I don’t mind either way.”

“I think I might want it to be our thing for a bit, I’m too scared of letting anyone else know,” she told me, her fists tightening in my tunic. “It feels too… new, between us and just the fact that I like a girl at all.”

“Then we’ll keep it a secret for now,” I smiled, kissing the top of her head. Then a thought occurred to me. “Although... you know that Tami will be able to spot what’s going on the moment she sees us together right?”

“What? How?” she asked, sitting up to look at me with big concerned eyes.

“She does that,” I shrugged. “She’s just good at seeing that kind of thing, reading people.”

“Oh well… I guess it’s okay if she knows,” Millie frowned.

“She knew that you liked girls before you did,” I pointed out wryly.

Her eyebrows rose. “How?”

“She caught you checking her out actually,” I chuckled. “From what I remember her saying anyway.”

“I did that?” she squeaked in embarrassment.

“You’d have to ask her.”

“There’s no way I’m asking that!” Millie exclaimed, then changed the subject. “Let’s get up… after one more kiss.”

****

Breakfast and kissing finished, and our streams started, we headed out. The journey to the big ass fuck off rock that Millie said her herbs grew around took almost four hours, and I made us stop to rest before continuing. We found the place by cresting a ridge that was about half as tall as the rock in question, and when we got our first glimpse it was awe inspiring.

The rock itself was almost a hundred meters tall, and looked very strange, almost as though it had once had proper form, but had been in place for so long that what features it once sported were long gone now. The stone itself was grey, although it had streaks of some silvery colouring to it, from what we could see beneath the foliage that had made its home there.

“Where does your herb grow?” I asked Millie, who was stood next to me, her jaw hanging open as she gawped up at it.

“Down there at the base,” she motioned to where the rock rather abruptly met the mountainside.

“Right, I guess we’ll just start down towards—“ I began, before any further words were cut off by the sound of some creature shrieking at an almost painful pitch.

I moved by instinct, pulling Millie behind me with one hand while my other equipped and raised my shield on one motion. I rocked with the sharp impact that came just moments later, and I felt my reflexive grimace shift into a grin. Here we go!

“What is that thing,” the smaller girl behind me exclaimed, staring up into the sky.

I followed her gaze and immediately lost my eyebrows to the stratosphere. An enormous bird that looked like a mix between a hawk and an eagle was circling around for another go at us. Was that a fucking Roc? Oh please no. I concentrated with my Identifier and sure enough, up came the dialogue box of dread.

“That’s a level 166 Roc, Millie. We need to get your herbs and get the fuck out of here, you ready to run with those little legs?” I asked with an almost challenging grin.

“We aren’t just going to run?” she squeaked, her big eyes wide with fear.

“Where would the fun in that be little Millie?” I chuckled as I went through my inventory and quickly equipped all my armour.

The Roc was coming in fast now for another pass at us, so I decided to make her decision for her. The slope down towards the base of the big ass hunk of rock was a steep one with a lot of loose stone scree. Perfect for some snowboarding, or… nearabouts.

I threw my shield down in front of us and grabbed Millie by the waist, swinging her into my arms despite her surprised protests. Then I leapt onto my shield and locked one of my feet into the straps and kicked off.

I felt the whistling of feathers and deadly sharp talons passing harmlessly behind us as we quickly gained speed. Before long we were skipping and careening down across the loose stone, building up terrible speed.

“It’s coming down behind us!” Millie cried out, staring up the way we’d come. Then my new lover did something I didn’t expect, she smiled. “Wait, I know what to do!”

She wriggled in my arms, which almost caused me to drop her, and summoned a little packet of something from her inventory. She threw that innocuous little packet of who-knew-what back towards the rock and raised her hand. The hand stayed there, waiting for a few beats, and then she clicked her fingers and all hell broke loose behind us.

There was an angry squawk from behind us, and debris began to rain down around us as the ground shook with an explosion. Strangely, another cry sounded, this one deeper and sounding more like a roar. Then a third angry cry came up, deeper even than the second. This one sounded like giant rocks being ground together, and moments later we heard just that. A ominous sound, the very real grinding of a whole lot of rock and dirt that had suddenly become dislodged.

“Oh… oops,” she said in a small voice, staring at the erupting chaos with more than a little terror.

“How bad is it?” I asked quickly, not being able to look back to assess the situation myself.

“Golems,” she squeaked.

“What?” I asked almost choking, desperate for her to clarify that to like, anything else.

“Lots of golems… really big golems,” she told me in a high, stressed voice.

“Where’s the damn Roc in all this?” I asked urgently.

“Uh, it’s fighting up in the sky… a wyvern I think,” she said, squinting up into the air.

“Okay now you’re fucking with me,” I laughed, shaking my head.

“I’m not,” she grimaced, then gave a high anxious little giggle. “Everything was so calm a moment ago.”

Oh, she was one hundred percent serious. What the fuck kind of place was this? A lodestone for high level monsters?

“Fuck me,” I groaned while desperately trying to keep us upright and ontop of the shield.

“What?” she goggled at me in confusion. “Like, right now?”

“What? No! It’s an expression Millie, damn!” I exclaimed with a stressed chuckle.

“Oh yeah, sorry, I just heard the words and—“ she didn’t get to finish her babbling, because our luck ran out and we hit an exposed root that catapulted us off my shield.

Quickly wrapping my armoured form around her as completely as I could, I braced against each impact as we rolled down the hill. Every thump took a chunk of my health, but I had more than enough of that. Then with one final, incredibly painful impact against the base of the big ass fuckin’ rock, we came to a rest.

“The shield!” Millie screamed, and I looked up just in time to see her blast it with some spell that sent it spinning off in a different direction. Not a moment too soon either, because it probably would have cut us in half given the speed it was going.

Instead of decapitating us, it hit the stone next to us with a resounding gong-like sound and rattled to a stop. I hoped it wasn’t bent or anything.

Standing up and taking a quick survey of the carnage, I saw that Millie had not been exaggerating at all. Shit had turned to utter chaos around us as stone golems rose out of the mountainside with angered roars, and the Roc battled a giant Wyvern for supremacy of the skies.

Shaking my head, I reached out with my mind towards the enchantment within my shield and felt it respond. If flew through the air towards me, and I caught it with a deftness that only practice could bring.

“Do you see your plant?” I asked, looking down at the girl who was still sitting on the ground.

She tore her gaze away from the carnage above us and blinked up at me for a few moments before she sprang to action and looked around. “Yeah! There it is!”

She rushed off towards her prize, and I followed after her, keeping an eye on the golems that were now in the middle of randomly throwing rocks around the mountainside like a bunch of very large, very heavy toddlers. The damn things were seriously huge, easily thrice my height, and they were not at all interested in preserving the serene mountainside view.

It was then that I noticed something peculiar. Where there had previously been just scree on a mountainside, I could make out more of the same type of stone as the hunk next to me. It definitely looked like it had been worked and shaped at some point, and… that was a door! There was a door amongst all the rampaging stone golems.

“Millie!” I blurted excitedly. “I see a door up there! On the slope where we came from!”

She had other things on her mind at that point I saw when I turned to her and found her digging a plant out of the ground whole, roots and all.

“That’s great!” she said, not bothering to look up. “I’m going to get as many as I can, you tell me when we have to leave.” Then she smiled and looked up at me, “You can tell me about the door afterwards.”

“Right,” I chuckled, enjoying the way she was taking charge for a moment. Just like she’d taken charge of the kissing so often last night.

While we were worrying about doors and plants on the ground, the Roc and the Wyvern had fought their battle above us. The Roc was most definitely winning, but it was taking some hits in the process. We needed to leave before they got done chewing on each other.

“I think we should probably leave now Millie,” I said, turning back to her, only to find her upright and ready to leave.

“I got all the ones here!” she exclaimed with a bright, happy grin.

Her hands were dirty as she took a hold of my face and pulled me gently down for another kiss. It was a sweet, warm one that held more tender affection that raw desire. This time it was me who melted, and I swept my shield arm around to bring her softly against me. Well, softly against my armour. This way she’d be protected by the giant slab of steel on my arm and my steel clad body on the other side, if anything tried to interrupt.

I vaguely remembered that we were on stream as we kissed and kissed, each little brush of lip against lip sending hot shivers of warmth through my heart. I was falling for her harder and faster than I had ever thought possible. She was so gut wrenchingly sweet and cute, but with a fierce, demanding aspect that was hidden within her, just waiting for someone to bring it out.

When we parted, she started into giggling almost immediately, saying in a stage whisper, “Oops… I forgot we were streaming.”

“Maybe the shield blocked their view?” I joked, the chat still in the midst of a total and catastrophic meltdown.

“I don’t think it did,” she frowned with mock concern.

Leaning down to murmur into her ear at a volume that the stream wouldn’t be able to hear, I said, “Looks like we’re not keeping this to ourselves after all, are you okay with that?”

“I’ll have to be, and plus you were right,” she whispered back. “I’d never be able to hide how much I like you anyway.”

“That’s very romantic my little cutie,” I said, kissing her cheek. “Anyway, should we get moving? Angry high level monsters around us and all...”

“Yup! I have never in my life wanted to be bird poop, and I don’t intend to start now!”

** The end of the Taylor interlude! **