Chapter 81

We were quick to finish up our bath after that. As much fun as this wild experience was, we had been in here for a while. I could tell through [Soultouched Connection] that nothing much had been happening while we were in here and once we finished... playing, I dropped the [Zone of Silence] as well.

The bedroom looked more or less the same as we left it earlier, everyone was still asleep except for the two of us.

"Should we wake them?" I whispered.

"I don't know. We probably should eat something but if we wake them now, it might be hard to get back to sleep and we'll be awake all night again."

I scratched the base of my horn. "We slept for half the day, if we wake them now, they'll still be tired but it shouldn't be too hard to get back to sleep afterwards and it'll be better than being starved in the morning."

Morrigan nodded. "Alright, I'll wake Torien though. She can be a bit grumpy when she's woken up like this."

I sat down on the bed next to Bella and my eyes met Mimi's who was still curled around Bella who was still peacefully asleep. She had a somewhat blank looking expression on her face, not giving me much of a clue how she was feeling.

"How are you doing Mimi? Are you okay now?"

She nodded a bit. "I'm okay... Is Bella going to be okay when she wakes up?"

I frowned a bit. "I don't know. Bella's not exactly in a normal position right now. Someone she loved basically... threw her away. Without even knowing she was doing it to her face."

"I see..."

I wasn't particularly convinced Mimi completely understood but if she didn't have any more questions I didn't really feel like pushing it right now. I didn't really know what to think about the whole situation either to be honest. If Bella wants to talk about it I'm sure she'll come to me, no need pushing her before she's ready.

I ran my hand against Bella's face before coming down to gently shake her shoulder. She woke up and looked around a little disoriented. Morrigan had lit a lantern bathing our room in a comfortable warm glow. When she finally realized where she was she smiled at me. She sat up and rubbed the dried tears out of her eyes before standing up and stumbling into the bathroom half awake.

Torien was sitting on her bed, awake but looking quite grumpy.

"Are you doing okay Torien?" I asked.

She sighed. "I wish you would have let me sleep through the night till morning."

"Do you want me to let you go back to sleep then?"

She shook her head. "Too late, I'm hungry now."

I laughed. "Me too."

I turned to Mimi who was sitting up and looking at her hands open and close like she seems to do pretty often. "Will you put out our trunks please Mimi? I want to change my clothes before we go out."

She nodded and quickly put down each of our trunks by the foot of our beds, roughly based on where we had been sleeping.

"Lilith...?" Mimi looked a bit awkward.

"What's wrong Mimi?"

"I want to come out with everyone, not as a sword but with everyone."

I nodded. I wasn't surprised, I felt like we were ignoring Mimi quite often in general. It was easy to forget her when she's just hanging from your belt.

"Do you want to try making yourself look more like one of us? You already look quite a bit more... normal since your eyes have changed."

She nodded and looked at her hands. In a wave she grew golden blond and white fur across her body, her glass shaft and nipples now looked like obsidian black flesh. A bit out of place looking but not all that odd looking really. Her horns turned a similar color to my own, a dark brown that contrasted interestingly from her now blond fur. Here eyes were still red but otherwise looked just as natural as they had been since they first changed.

She looked up at me and smiled. Her new form was cute, though she still looked a bit like a hodgepodge of different animals. Rather than looking like a moving statue she instead looked like an odd cross between different animals. She lifted her arm and moved it around while looking at the fur, not having any of the problems she was having when she first tried to imitate another form.

"How do I look?" she asked nervously.

I smiled. "You look great, very cute. Is it hard to maintain that form?"

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "It does burn off more mana than usual so I don't think I want to walk around like this all of the time... but sometimes I want to do the things everyone else does."

I nodded. "That sounds good. If we need to buy extra monster cores for you that's fine."

The door to the bathroom opened up and Mimi turned to see Bella with a shocked look on her face. "Mimi? Is that you?"

Mimi smiled hesitantly. "Yes, it's me. I want to walk around with everyone today."

Bella rushed up to Mimi and gave her a hug. "You look so cute!"

The tension in Mimi's muscles eased and she hugged Bella back. "Do you think so? I wasn't sure if this would look okay..."

She pulled back to give Mimi a long look up and down. "You look good. Not sure what kind of beastfolk you look like, a few of them if I'm being honest, but you look really cute like this."

Looking at them standing face to face like this made me realize how similar in stature the two are. "Hey Bella, if Mimi wants to go out with us she's going to need some clothes. You look like about the right size to share with her."

Bella lit up. "Oh can I pick something out for you Mimi? Hold on, let me look through my clothes."

Bella opened up her trunk to a... quite disorganized pile of clothes. We had been in a rush but something tells me that she isn't the most organized person in the first place. She pulled out a few things, glancing back and forth from Mimi to the different outfits in her trunk before settling on a light blue sundress.

"Here! Try this on."

Mimi awkwardly pulled the dress over herself, obviously not used to wearing clothes yet. She was careful not to tear it while feeding her horns through the hole for her head. She stood up and looked over herself with a pleased smile.

"You look great Mimi!" Morrigan said. looking over her. "You um, may want to borrow a brassiere from Lilith though..." I looked down and saw her hard nipples poking through the front of her dress. I dug through my trunk and pulled out my spare bra and handed it to her.

"Um... will you help me put it on?" Mimi asked.

"Sure." I helped her take off her dress and showed her how to put it on. Mimi had Bella's figure but shared a similar bust size with myself making them look proportionally pretty large. While we were at it I gave her a pair of panties that she thankfully understood how to put on herself.

When we were done Mimi looked like a normal girl. She would stand out quite a bit though, between her good looks and unique mixture of beastfolk traits she would definitely draw eyes.

I tilted my head to the side in thought. "We should come up with a story, or at least agree on what kind of beastfolk Mimi is," I said aloud.

Torien tapped her chin. "Yeah, she doesn't really look like anything I'd recognize. We could probably just make something up."

"Not to mention where she comes from..." Bella added.

Morrigan let out a sigh. "I'm not the best with geography. I wouldn't really know where we could say she's from. I suppose the whole 'she doesn't have any memories' thing worked for Lilith."

I furrowed my brows. "I really don't have any memories past two weeks ago."

Morrigan nodded. "Right. In your case it was true but we might as well use the same story for Mimi."

I scratched my horn. "What about the guild?"

Torien shook her head. "Better to leave them out of it for now. Mimi can be out and about when we're in town or when we're alone but it's probably for the best if we keep her hidden from anyone important like the guild master, Mirianna, or any of the people from the church. ...as if they need another reason to discriminate against all of us."

"Alright, then if anyone asks lets say that Mimi and I are both from the Queendom of Arala. We met because both of us lost our memories and a mutual friend put us in contact with each other. Mimi doesn't know what kind of Beastfolk she is and her system just says Beastfolk."

Morrigan shook her head this time. "No, her status would say what her true species is, whatever that would be. We're better off making something up."

"How about something based on her name?" Bella said. "If we make something up based on her name we can say she took her name from that. Kind of how we named her in the first place."

Mimi shrugged. "I don't care. Just tell me what I need to remember."

I leaned back and looked at the ceiling. "How about Mimadora? Something a bit longer than her name could bring it farther from the name Mimic."

"Ehh, kinda sounds stupid." Torien says with a grin.

Morrigan pushed her sister playfully. "Hush you."

I just shrugged. "I never claimed to be the best at naming things."

"Aww, but you gave me my name and I think it's great!" Bella said happily.

"Yeahhh but... I just had good inspiration for that."

Torien's stomach loudly growled, making her a bit flustered. "Alright alright, Mimi the Mimadora it is, lets go eat, I'm starving."

Luckily Mimi shared a shoe size with Bella so she was able to borrow her old pair of shoes for the moment. It wasn't perfect but most of the shops other than restaurants and inns would be closed by now. It would have to wait for tomorrow.

The five of us walked out of the inn together for the first time, Mimi happily looking around. She turned to me smiling, "Everything looks a bit different when you look at it this way."

"Can you still see your usual way while in this form?" I asked.

She nodded. "Yup. It was pretty disorienting the first time I took this form but I got used to it pretty quickly. Your kind of vision is much more limited but everything in your field of view is so much more vibrant. I can focus on specific things using my normal vision but it lacks the clarity of your vision. Still, you can only see in front of you instead of from all directions like me. Pretty limited."

"Shhh, keep your voices down. You two shouldn't talk about that stuff in the open." Morrigan looked worried. There weren't many people around this time of night but it was a good point.

"Alright, we'll talk about that another time Mimi. For now lets go get something for all of us to eat... and maybe some ice cream after."

The twins' ears both bolted upright at the mention, making me smile. They didn't say anything about it but their tails swayed back and forth and they both seemed excited.

"So, food stands or sit down restaurant?"

"Well, if you're thinking about getting ice cream after why don't we eat at the food stalls again..." Torien said nonchalantly.

"Yeah! Something quick and in the fresh air sounds good." Morrigan agreed.

They were transparently leading me towards the ice cream stall again but I didn't mind. It just made me laugh.