New World, Old Problems 8 – The passage of time

‘Today is a bad day,’ Apexus thought, when he woke up.

The origin of that wasn’t any aches the slime had. It wasn’t even related to his mood in general. Rather, it lay with the tiny wet spots on the sheet under Reysha’s face. Circles made by tears shed during sleep, a giveaway that the tiger girl wouldn’t be useful for much today. Carefully, to let her have as much rest as she could have, Apexus moved out of the clean bed and grabbed his robe.

Two months had passed since they arrived at that little hut. A simple life had started forming. On the daily, Apexus would move out into the dungeon, often accompanied by the two women. For the most part, they went in there for food scavenging, but, since the dungeon was so far below their level, they had pushed to clear it once. It had been meant to be combat training for Reysha, but the Rogue continued to suffer from her mental blockades, finding herself unable to use her abilities properly.

Regardless, they cleared the dungeon. It was an easy boss fight and Apexus got nothing out of it. Now they only went there to get food. They picked up a lot of items on the side though, which they sold to the nearby cities as they had basically nothing else to do with any of it.

Initially, there were a lot of things to do with that money. The equipment that could be bought locally was made from beginner materials, but it was made competently. Apexus got his own adventurer’s bag. Aclysia got a proper Priest’s robe for combat, the blessed fabric giving her a minimal amount of protection, particularly against magic, while keeping so light she could fly around without problem.

Reysha, although she insisted that she couldn’t fight, meaning equipping her was a waste of money, got some upgrades to her leather armour and the kind of heavy belt that could carry all the necessary tools of her trade. Two daggers, throwing knives and lockpicks, all were acquired with the money they got from the dungeons. Although she didn’t manage to properly wield the weapons, at least the lockpicks came in useful. Sometimes they would find locked chests in dungeons, so her having those tools allowed her to ‘pay back’ for the other acquisitions.

Once those immediate needs were taken care off, they started to get things that were either somewhat or entirely superfluous. A second set of clothing for everyone, a casual dress for Aclysia, a light shirt and comfortable pants for Reysha, and an extra robe for Apexus. Reysha even got a second pair of shoes. They were stored easily in the adventurer’s bag.

Then they started fixing the hut. Through labour and investment, they closed the holes in the walls, they stuffed the mattress with new feathers, they got a new sheet to throw on top, a pair of thin blankets and a whole lot of other, small stuff that made life where they were a bit more bearable. After a month, they had just about everything that they could think off to make life inside the hut as pleasant as it could be.

Money just kept trickling in. They had a fourth adventurer’s bag that was purely their purse. Aclysia kept it on her, as the metal fairy had taken to managing the finances. She did it well, although the fact that they didn’t have to buy food certainly helped. At this point, they had managed to scrape together a small fortune, at least compared to what the average household had. It was purely a product of having so little things to spend their money on.

Through those two months, Apexus had realized that they could categorize things in about three ways. There were good days, fairly rare, where they managed to make a bit of progress with their situation. The slime and his beloved angel had managed to largely come to terms with things by now. They still behaved illogically in certain aspects, they had each other to point that out to them. Aclysia was extremely careful to not make them stand out in any fashion.

To get the feathers for the mattress, she had arranged there to be an exchange where they left the money somewhere and the farmer, who had feathers to sell after plucking his birds for a feast, simply left the bag standing there. All to avoid the farmer seeing them. That was suspicious in other ways, of course, but Aclysia was only concerned about people finding out where they were, so keeping their identities as hidden as possible had to be the priority.

Apexus still had issues trusting anyone outside of those two. Any concentration of people that was denser than what he could keep in view at any given time put him on edge. For that reason, he didn’t go into the city alone at any point. Not that Aclysia would have been happy if he did.

The medium days, the majority of the time that had passed, were when they woke up, went through the motions, and went to sleep. Nothing of note happened. They got the food they needed, they got the water they needed, and they earned a bit more money. Albeit they all knew that their current security could be ended by the threat of Apotho at any time, this normality was worth the time.

The bad days where those were Reysha was overwhelmed by her lingering issues. Even on good days, the tiger girl continued to be a burden. Apexus and Aclysia didn’t see carrying her as anything to be bitter about, but that didn’t change the fact that she was, at the moment, a burden. She couldn’t fight on her own, she couldn’t go to the city on her own and, on the bad days, she couldn’t even be on her own. When she cried in her sleep, that was a clear indicator that she would spend the majority of the day apathetically sitting around.

Apexus left the little house and went outside, where Aclysia was doing her usual circle around the area. Twice a day, she looked for any suspicious changes in the area. “Morning, my melody,” the slime greeted in a happy tone. Despite their position in life at large, their current situation justified a certain amount of joy. Letting the threat of Apotho ruin every second of their existence would be exactly what the traitorous warlock wanted. Apexus wasn’t willing to spend more time than necessary with a prey mentality.

“Good morning, darling,” Aclysia responded, trying to stay positive herself. “Is Reysha still asleep?”

“Yes,” he answered with a nod and jumped directly into the necessary discussion. “Will you stay with her today?”

Aclysia, having gotten up about an hour earlier, had already noticed the tiger girl’s state. The decision was already made. “Yes,” she answered with a simple nod. “I would be thankful if you could keep your feeding to a minimum today. We don’t require the money, so the less time you spent potentially running into adventurers, the better.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Apexus promised. “If I can, I’ll bring some food back for Reysha.”

“Just remember to pick a monster that doesn’t bleed too much. Cleaning an adventurer’s bag is a horrid task.”

The slime didn’t even know how to begin with that, so he said something affirmative and accompanied her on her remaining round through the woods. “Is this the arrival you wanted?” he asked, when nothing else to talk about came to mind.

“Yes,” Aclysia answered quickly and looked around. She was the worst tracker out of the three of them by a wide margin, but she did her best to notice things. Under normal circumstances, Apexus or Reysha would have done these patrols of the area instead, but the metal fairy insisted on doing them, usually before the other two were even awake. “Having a home, albeit a temporary one, has aided me in finding my balance again. I don’t know how to best put this… I think my mind has… settled?”

“That makes me happy,” Apexus hummed, those words felt very inadequate. Although most of his fundamental speech issues were resolved by now, the chimeric creature still struggled to adapt to expressing his emotions with those simple sounds sometimes. To make the intent clearer, he added, “I love you.”

Aclysia chuckled, at the slight awkwardness of the conversation, and pressed a light kiss on his cheek. So close to home, the slime didn’t wear his mask. “I love you too,” she responded and they continued their circle. “We have to think about moving soon.”

“Yes,” Apexus could only agree. Not because they had found any tracks or other signs that made them worried, but simply because time had been passing. Even with the issues they still had to resolve, they could continue to grow. To have any chance to survive they needed to be much stronger. “However, as long as Reysha is the way she is…”

His voice trailed off into nothing and Aclysia had nothing to add. There was only one obvious path forwards, between where they currently were and what they had to do. If Reysha could not ever recover from her current state, could not laugh as she used to, fight as she used to and act like she used to, then she truly would be a burden forever.

As much as they wanted to help her, every day they continued to dwell was another day they hadn’t spent preparing themselves. It had been easy to ignore when they needed rest themselves but now that they were thinking about moving on, they only really stayed for her sake. The logical thing to do was to leave her behind, allow them to at least save themselves. Reysha would likely be spared if she just didn’t associate with Apexus anymore. Apotho owed her his freedom, after all.

Regardless of what was logical, neither the slime nor the angel entertained the thought for too long. They had lost so much, gone through all of the last few months together and for each other. Apexus would rather die, however horribly, than be separated from either of them.

They finished the morning patrol and went back to the house. If leaving her behind wasn’t an option, then they could only continue as they were. They had stayed for a long time already, too long in many ways, but life wasn’t bad.

When they returned, to their pleasant surprise, Reysha had gotten up and was in the process of getting clothed. Her undergarments were made from fine linen, greyish-white panties and a breast-band that wrapped around her chest and kept it from bouncing around too much. Nothing fine, materials and craftsmanship in this area were limited, but it did the job, especially once she put on her shirt and pants as well.

On the normal mornings of bad days, Reysha had to be motivated to even get out of bed. “Morn’,” she slurred and yawned, her mouth opening wide, lips pulling back and revealing her fangs. It was a very cattish motion, supported by the flicking of her red, furred ears on the top of her head. Reaching up, she pulled some dusty particles and small pieces of yarns out of the fluffy hairs that grew on the inside of her cat ears. They must have gathered over night. Her face had already been cleaned, courtesy of the metal bucket of water they kept inside the house. “Slept absolutely fucking awfully.”

“We saw that,” Aclysia’s empathetic voice echoed out, as the metal fairy walked over. “It appears to have struck you less than usual, though.”

“It’s slowly getting better, I think,” Reysha answered and sighed. “I dreamt of that burning sky again, it… I wouldn’t say I’m getting used to it, but I feel like I’m getting better at standing up to it.”

Apexus felt infinitely relieved to hear anything like that. If the bad days ceased being too bad, then then it was a step in the right direction. Without much thought, the slime jumped on Reysha and cuddled her. “Good, progress is good!” he declared.

“No, stop, I don't deserve to be coddled like that I want- I- ohhh, that’s the good spot,” Reysha’s protests were silenced once Apexus started scratching her behind the ears. There was that one spot that, when rubbed, successfully relaxed the tiger girl in most cases. It didn’t do much when she was stressed, but when it came to having a quiet minute, that was a good way to have her purring.

Holding her in front of him in a firm embrace, Apexus scratched her head for a while. His libido surfaced for a second, but went down under pretty quickly again. It had gotten ignored for the past two months now. The slime got horny sometimes, as did Aclysia, but neither of them had felt comfortable to act on it with Reysha around and unable to join. As such, they were currently living a celibate life. Not entirely necessary, but also not a problem.

“You deserve all the cuddles,” Apexus decided and rubbed against her to mark her with his scent. An instinctual and possessive gesture, but one that Reysha was receptive towards, even if it failed to create the sexual reaction in herself that she would have wanted. “Do you feel good enough to join in the dungeon?”

She gave that a moment of thought, but shook her head. That was already more than the apathetic, slow denial that was usually given, so Apexus didn’t push her harder on that. “I’ll try to go out tonight, if nothing else,” the tiger girl promised.

During one of her depressed days, Apexus had suggested that she started moving around the outskirts of the nearby city at night. The logic was that, if she couldn’t fight, she should at least keep her Sneaking ability well maintained. While she was out, she could listen to some rumours as well, gathering some random information that might come in useful.

It had been closer to a command, actually, as the slime had been quite ticked off that she didn’t even do anything on days that she was able to. Being willing to help her get through that naturally came with the expectation that she would do whatever she could to improve. The redhead’s fixation on failing at combat and sex had only driven down her mood, so the slime had suggested something that could give her some feeling of accomplishment every day.

“Remember to be tremendously careful,” Aclysia chimed in. She wasn’t all that happy with Reysha going out on her own. Not because of the state she was in, but also because someone could spot her sneaking around and ask all sorts of unwanted questions. She held back because it really was the only thing that the Rogue could do by herself that gave her a bit of happiness and distraction.

“I haven’t gotten caught so far – somehow,” Reysha grinned. Nothing more than that. Aside from a small giggle here and there, the somewhat crazy woman hadn’t laughed at all in the past few months.

Hopefully, that would change soon.