Twisted Destiny

The poker game actually went on for quite a while, three hours at least, after which my family and Hilda decided to chat a bit with each other afterwards. As for me, I had been able to work with great focus on the work I had basically given to myself. But I decided I had achieved enough for today and started to pack my things back up again prompting my sister to come and look over my shoulder.

“How did your designing go?” She asked, drinking her mocktail from a steel straw.

“Pretty good.” I leant out of the way to give a clear view of the poster in front of me. “What do you think?”

“Wow, that’s fantastic. Hilda, check this out.”

Hilda came over as well, although she definitely looked a bit tired, and stood behind my other shoulder. “Hey that’s great. A lot better than that AI slop you see around all the time.”

“I hope so.” I laughed. “If I can’t do better than AI I might as well stop my studies altogether.”

“Is this the finished product already?” My sister asked, looking at her watch. “In just a couple of hours?”

“No.” I shook my head quickly. “It still needs some work before I’m happy with it, the coloring as well is not where I want it to be.”

“Could you send the poster to me when it’s done, Amicia?” Hilda asked, staring at my screen.

“I’ll ask the store if I can but I don’t think it’ll be an issue, why?” I looked up at my cool mother figure.

“I would like to show this to the head of our advertisement department. Are you open to taking jobs? Like actual paying jobs?”

“Sure.” I nodded. “But it depends of course how much work it’s going to be. I still need time for uni after all. But if I can use it to increase the size of my portfolio and get some references I’m all for it.”

“Is it some kind of big advertisement thing?” Lise looked at Hilda and slurped through her straw.

“Do you remember that game festival our company is trying to set up? Thomas was complaining that he couldn’t find a good artist for the poster design.”

“Gonna put Ami forward?”

“I don’t see why not.” She shrugged. “This is really good stuff and who knows what doors it’ll open for the little fluff in the future.”

“True.”

I coughed into my fist. “Ahum, I’m sitting right here.”

“Did we say something wrong, little floofball?” My sister grinned and ruffled her hand through my hair. “Or are you denying the floofiness of yourself?”

“I am very floofy.” I stated adamantly. “The floofiest of all.”

“Can confirm.” Sam, who was still sitting at the table together with Nikki, confirmed.

“If I can interrupt the art and fluff talk for a bit.” Nikki raised her hand. “Have you gotten a message back from Veanya yet, Amicia?”

I checked my phone but my home screen wasn’t showing the message icon yet so I opened my messaging app to investigate further. “The message has been delivered and it’s actually been read, but nope, no reply.”

“Guess we can’t do anything but wait.” Nikki shrugged and then stretched her back, putting her hands behind her neck.

-Exactly, we just need to wait it out…-

We sat together on the sofa watching a documentary on the side while we had some idle chitchat for about an hour when Hilda softly slapped her hands on her thighs and got up “I think I probably should be going now.” She wanted to walk away but wobbled a bit. “I really need to get into my bed.”

“I’m not really comfortable letting you go home like that, Hilda.” My sister stood up as well and gently took Hilda by the wrist. “Driving like that isn’t responsible. You should stay for the night and sleep on the sofa.”

Hilda took a second to think and nodded in affirmation. “Yeah… You are probably right. It’s not far but driving like this isn’t going to be safe for everyone involved.”

“I’ll go grab a blanket and a pillow out of the closet.” Nikki stood up from the sofa too and headed towards the hallway where we stored our bedding.

“Are you going to survive taking a break from Haurchefaud?” Sam asked with a smile.

“I think it’s been high time we took a bit of a break.” Hilda replied. “I already started missing just having normal dreams.”

“That’s true.” Sam agreed. “Falling asleep normally in my own body is something I definitely should value more.”

As Sam and Hilda got into a deeper conversation about dreams my phone started vibrating. Given the timing, that could only be one person and the others realized that too as the room went silent when I took my phone in hand.

“Veanya?”

“Hey Amicia, how are you doing? I only just read your message, sorry about that. I’ve been resting the entire day.”

“I’m doing okay’ish, I guess.” I replied. “Well, apart from the stuff that’s going on with my mental health apparently." My family looked incredibly curious to what I was saying. “Uhm, is it fine if I put you on speaker so the rest can listen to our conversation?”

“Absolutely no problem.”

I quickly tapped the speaker button. “Okay, done.”

“Have you felt anything else since you sent the message to me?”

I shrugged. “Not really.” I looked at my family once more.

“No, we didn’t notice anything either. She’s just been diligently working on something.” My sister replied to Veanya, raising her voice a little so she would be transmitted clearly.

“Been working already?”

“Just a side project, nothing really that intensive.”

“Ah alright, that’s adviseable…” Veanya stayed quiet for a couple of moments. “It might be something post-traumatic but it’s better to be safe than sorry. I’ll ask Gamma to give you a checkup once she has rested more as well. She was also pretty battered.”

“I didn’t realize you all were going to need that much rest.” Lise commented.

“We used up a lot of our energy fighting the diaboli and Gamma got hurt pretty badly too.” Veanya replied. “She might have looked a lot better when we were watching over Sam and Amicia back on Haurchefaud, but she was running on fumes.”

“And you two don’t have the advantage of Amicia’s natural healing.” Hilda nodded knowingly.

“Exactly. I think that’s pretty much the only reason why her and Sam have been able to be up and about today.”

“Quite probably.” Sam agreed. “I’m happy she didn’t pick a rogue subtype… no offense, Hilda.”

“None taken.” She chuckled.

“Do you know when Gamma is going to be rested up enough?” Nikki asked, carrying in the bedding as she had stated before.

“I don’t know, really. She has withdrawn to her own domain so she can rest most optimally and she tends to close herself off from the rest of existence when she does so. But I’ll go and visit her tomorrow morning at the latest and I’ll let you know when I do as there’s also still something else we need to talk about.”

“Being?” I tilted my head slightly.

“Surely you remember your friend asking to become a catgirl, right? Before we got so rudely interrupted by the daiboli invasion.”

“Ah, right. I didn’t forget, it was just not really that much of a priority.”

“Indeed. But to cut to the chase, we have basically done all the preparations apart from some practical planning. It would be useful if you could alert Carol to this fact so we can have a final conversation about it and start the procedure when we are all ready for it.”

“I’ll send her a message tomorrow as well then, she will be happy to hear that, no doubt.”

“Max will be too.” Sam giggled.

“Okay, then we’ll talk again after I’ve heard from Gamma.”

“Alrighty. Thanks for calling me, Veanya, and how is Sid doing by the way?”

“He’s doing fine but just like me he has been resting. Although resting in Sid’s mind means something else than it does to you and me.”

“Don’t tell me he goes to a gym to rest. The guy is already too much of a mountain.” Sam commented.

“No, but you are not far off. He goes to sit in hot water baths for the entire day, heated by nearby volcanoes and then takes an ice bath afterwards.”

“That would have been my second guess.” Sam snorted.

“It’s… well…” Veanya couldn’t really find her words. “If it works for him, sure, but that’s not how I personally look at a rest-day.”

“I’m sure a lot of Finnish people would agree with him though. And they would probably add some sauna to that as well.” Hilda smiled.

“And the Japanese would agree but without the ice bath.” Nikki stated.

“Some of the cultures on Earth I will never understand… but anyway, have a nice evening everyone, and Amicia, take care and you’ll hear from me tomorrow.”

“Good night, Veanya!” I swiped the conversation away.

-Let’s just hope the checkup won't reveal anything… serious…-