The morning after our altercation with Karen and Terry, I found myself waking up early, snuggling with Poppy on a pillow atop the dresser in my sister’s bedroom. My sister and Ainslee must have extracted us from Kelly’s cozy tails and placed us in our current location because the last thing I could remember was the cozy warmth of those tails and Poppy’s body close to mine. Whoever brought us in must have been extra careful not to hurt us or wake us too.

While the former was certainly a possibility, due to our small size and relatively fragile bodies, waking us up unintentionally was far less likely. We Sprites sleep pretty deeply due to the whole hibernation to conserve energy thing after all. Usually, we would only wake up once we had enough rest or due to loud noises. Usually, six hours of sleep seemed to be plenty for us though, and we usually had a secure place to rest with no imminent dangers.

The only real danger while we were sleeping would normally be from animals, but Aunt Maya and the girls didn’t have any pets wandering around that might want to take a bite out of us. We were indoors, had my house as well now to keep us safe from most animals, and if there were any real emergencies, like a fire, Aunt Maya assured us that the home emergency alarm was extremely loud.

So, I was feeling plenty safe even if we weren’t inside my house, which would be almost impossible for Ainslee or Kelly to put us inside and to bed. It might be the size of a dollhouse, but it wasn’t built like one so you could just open it up to put things inside. It had to be built like a big people’s house to keep us secure, comfortable, and safe from predators should I choose to put it outdoors somewhere.

I snuggled closer to Poppy only to hear a happy sigh as she wrapped her arms around me. Turning my face slightly upward toward hers, I found her propped up on one elbow and gazing at me with a contented smile on her face. “Mmmm… I could get used to waking up with you like this, Love,” she hummed.

“Well, you are a very nice sight to wake up to,” I agreed.

“Yeah, we should get out of these clothes,” my girlfriend murmured before her breath hitched and she got that look in her eyes like she thought she might have said the wrong thing. “N-not because I had anything sexual in mind! I’m totally fine with taking our relationship slowly, I just thought… we were sleeping in them and…”

I silenced the floundering Fire Sprite with a kiss. “I know, hot stuff. My clothes are bunched up in the worst way from sleeping in them all night and we could both probably use a shower too. We have a busy morning ahead of us.”

Despite our shared eagerness to get out of our clothes from yesterday and to get clean, we stayed snuggled together for a few more minutes before getting up, finding our comm crowns that had slipped off our heads sometime during the night, and heading into my little house to shower and change clothes. We ended up showering together. It wasn’t like we hadn’t seen each other naked before after all, and we were girlfriends now, so I figured it would be okay, and we could help one another wash our backs and wings properly.

The latter required a gentle touch, and it was hard for us to do it ourselves, especially the base of our wings, where we couldn’t reach easily. I wouldn’t trust just anyone handling my wings since they were very sensitive and delicate, but I trusted Poppy. She was my girlfriend now and I cared for her more than I’d ever cared about anyone but close family members and Aunt Maya’s family. Poppy was ecstatic when I suggested it.

I was not prepared for how awkward showering together would be, not to mention the feelings that it would summon within me. We’d seen each other naked before but actually touching each other, wet skin to wet skin, was something altogether different. It summoned a heat to rival Poppy’s flames within my core, I shivered under her touch despite the heat of the water, my nipples were so hard they ached, and I was relatively sure that not all the moisture running down my inner thighs was from the water.

I wanted to do such things to her, and I wanted her to do them to me too. This frustration was not just limited to me either, or at least that’s what I believed, going by Poppy’s staccato breathing, flushed skin, and her similarly hard nipples. As tempted as I was to give into those urges then and there and learn what heights of pleasure we might be able to bring each other to, I had to keep us on track since we really did have stuff to do.

Thankfully, I was starting to get pretty good with my Water magic and was able to cheat to speed up the process by controlling the water streaming over us to rinse us off thoroughly once we were done. It was like the fluid was giving us a massage and I had managed to calm down some by focusing on that instead of my desire for Poppy. She used her own magic to generate enough hot air to dry off our wings too, so we wouldn’t have to towel them dry. I had learned in the Fairy Ward that even gently patting my sensitive wings dry, even with the fluffy towels Poppy had made, was irritating and uncomfortable.

All too soon, we were leaving the bathroom and heading to our respective bedrooms to get ready for the day. We had decided on separate rooms for now while we explored our new relationship because I had three bedrooms in this house and because Poppy seemed reluctant to push me into anything that I wasn’t completely ready for. It was one of the things that I loved about her; she was always trying to consider my wants and needs as much as her own in our growing relationship.

Still, in light of what I had been feeling when we showered together, I thought that maybe tonight we might share a bed. Hopefully, we wouldn’t just be sleeping either. With Poppy reluctant to push me into things like sex for fear of hurting me or scaring me off, I figured that I might have to take the lead on this, which sucked because I had zero experience in this kind of thing.

I was admittedly dense about a lot of things when I first Sprouted, and probably before that too, but dense isn’t always the same as stupid. Maybe it was because I was trying so hard to hide from the fact that I was a girl inside while growing up or the fairly sheltered upbringing that Kelly and I had. Regardless of the cause, I had been ignorant on a lot of things but Sprouting and spending the past month in the Fairy Ward with Poppy, the nurses, and later my sister had taught me a lot and helped me to fill some of those gaps.

Even Poppy’s adorkable verbal slip-ups and hurried, apologetic corrections helped me to learn and find myself. Poppy was a natural flirt, at least with me, but it wasn’t difficult for me to see that she was trying to hold herself back and give me the time and space I needed before going further with our relationship. While I appreciated that greatly, I now looked forward to a time when she could just be unrestrained in her affections and not worrying about scaring me off.

“Tonight,” I promised myself as I got dressed in the master bedroom. I wasn’t going to call it ‘my room’ because hopefully after tonight if all went well, it would be ‘our room’ instead. I liked the sound of that. Fun later, for now, I had a busy morning ahead of me.

As soon as Kelly and Ainslee were up, we all had to go to Vanguard Tower. Poppy and I both had our regular training sessions in elemental magic with Captain Monroe and Lt. Williams while my sister had schooling in her illusion and shapeshifting abilities with her coach, Yue. Ainslee would be coming along as well since she needed to get the paperwork done to sign on with the Vanguard, get registered as a student at the university, and hopefully choose her program and courses as well.

Then there was the rather ominous message that I had gotten from Vice-Commander Carter last night. She wanted me to meet her at her office after my morning training session with Captain Monroe to talk about things related to being a leader, go over certain rules and regulations, and securely transfer the monitoring app for Karen’s tracking implant and some files to my comm crown that were for my eyes only. The whole idea was making me nervous just thinking about it.

I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being a leader, of the lives of the people I cared about being in my hands. I wasn’t fond of the idea of Karen being on our team either. I was going along with it because I was in no position to argue and there were precautions in place, but I wasn’t sure that I was willing to trust her with my life and those of my friends. I said I would give her a chance though, and I planned to keep that promise.

I tried to shake those thoughts off as I took a quick look at the time on my comm crown and thought toward Moonlight, “Are you awake? Do you need something to eat before we leave? It sounds like Kelly is up and getting ready, so we’ll be leaving after we eat.”

-I am once again ethereal, my Maiden,- was her immediate reply. -I have been since the twins went to bed last night, and keeping watch over you and your loved ones. Worry not about me. Save your concern for the group of people outside.-

“Group of people? Outside?” Well, that was certainly alarming, especially after what happened yesterday.

-They showed up not long after Maya left to go to open her store. Allow me to show you what I see, Lily,- Moonlight responded. There was a slight pressure in my head, but I trusted Moonlight enough to relax and let her do whatever it was she was trying to do. It turned out that she was projecting an image of what she was seeing. It was sort of like watching movies with an implant, only there was a slightly hazy quality to it.

“I didn’t know you could do that, it could be useful someday,” I thought before concentrating on the image that she was projecting into my mind. There were a bunch of people outside the front gates to the property with varying types of cameras and holo-recorders. “Shit.”

It looked like the media had gotten wind of what happened yesterday and found Ainslee’s address. I knew that they would probably hear about it sooner or later since we were told that transcripts of yesterday's private court session in the tower were supposed to be released to the public for full transparency, but I didn’t think they’d catch on and find us this quickly. While I could see why the Commander and Vice-Commander of the Vanguard would want such transparency regarding legal matters, even releasing some of the footage I had gotten of the attack while streaming, this was concerning.

The Vanguard may not want to hide anything from the citizens of Amethyst Harbour, at least about the running of the city or legal proceedings like this, but our names and those of our attackers were all over those transcripts. With Terry and Karen both being very wealthy, this was bound to stir up a media feeding frenzy, and neither of them was available for interviews with one being in prison and the other in Vanguard Tower. I had no legal address yet either, so of course they’d come after Ainslee.

Oh, this was not good at all. I thought we’d have more time before having to deal with this shit, and nine o’clock in the morning was too early to be facing a gaggle of rabid reporters, especially since Ainslee was still pretty shaken up about things last night and needed a while to process it all emotionally and mentally. I had a terrible feeling that this was going to be a very long day.