† † †
“You’d best take responsibility for this!” Elizavett said as she finally roused her limp body. Her fur coat was slick all over with Kanata’s drool.
“Responsibility?” Kanata asked, innocently cocking her head.
“Responsibility for...for touching me so intensely! Why are you acting so puzzled?! I won’t allow you to have your way with me for just the one evening after trapping me in this unmarriageable body! Take responsibility!” Kanata had slurped and sniffed every last inch of Elizavett’s body, leaving the vampire clearly humiliated. It was hard to tell because of her pink fur, but it seemed that she was blushing. Her eyes were certainly misty with confused emotion. “I absolutely, absolutely will not let you get away! I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth!”
“So does that mean...that you wanna be my companion?!” Kanata asked.
“Your...companion?”
“Yes, my companion!”
“Ah, hm...” Elizavett lowered her head in slight disappointment. “Companions, then, not lovers... Oh well. I suppose that will do for starting out.” She looked up, her mind apparently settled. “Very well. In that case, I look forward to our partnership. How should I address you...? Kanata, was it?”
Kanata had forgotten that they were in the middle of self-introductions before the furballs got into their fight. “That’s right! My name’s Kanata! It’s nice to meet you, Elizabat!” Kanata hugged the pink furball tight, beaming happily.
“The pleasure is— Wait, what did you call me? Elizabat?!”
“That’s right!” said Kanata. “Elizabat! Any Beast Tamer worth their salt knows you gotta give nicknames to your companions! It’s a rule!”
“I...I see,” said Elizavett. “I had no idea that such a rule existed...” Of course, that rule was entirely an invention of Kanata’s. But since the only people strange enough to become Beast Tamers in the modern age seemed to be Albert Molmo and Kanata herself, and since both of them shared the same policy of giving nicknames to their magic beasts, it might as well be the rule. “Well, I suppose if it is what you wish to call me, Mistress, then I have no objections.”
“Mistress?” Kanata echoed.
“If you’re going to call me what you like, then I’ll do the same for you! Besides, you’re a girl, so I can’t exactly call you ‘husband.’”
“Hm?” Kanata asked. “I’m not sure I get it, but it’s all good with me!” She felt like there must be some sort of misunderstanding, but Kanata didn’t especially see the need to worry about such things. The fluff was more important. She hugged Elizavett tight, the fanfare that sounded in her head whenever she got a new companion playing merrily.
“By the way...” Elizavett ventured, looking over her tiny round body with its pink fur and little wings. There was no trace at all of the gorgeous blonde-haired, red-eyed vampire she had been before. “What happened to my body, anyway? My wounds are healed, and I’m in much better condition than I was before, but I can’t use my magic at all. And I can’t turn into any of my old forms—not human, not mist, not even a cloud of bats...”
“Perhaps it is the result of drinking Kanata’s blood?” Zag’giel said, pulling himself up on faltering legs. Kanata had given him the same treatment as Elizavett, and until now he had been lying limp and drained in the aftermath. “Kanata’s blood is overflowing with magic power. The moment you tasted it, the wounds on your body disappeared instantaneously.”
The problem, however, was what had happened next...
“Lady Kanata’s divine presence is great enough that I, the Spirit Wolf, am certain that she is none other than the Saint I accompanied,” volunteered Fenrir, finally recovering enough from Kanata’s slobbery ordeal to join the conversation. “As a vampire, Corpse Princess, your unnatural life comes from the curse of the moon. It doesn’t seem strange that you might suffer some kind of harm from drinking such holy blood.”
Elizavett was starting to wonder whether she was going to be stuck in this form for the rest of her life. As a noble vampire princess, the prospect of living as such a hideous ball of fur filled her with dread.
“I see...” she said. “So it is your fault I’m in this form after all, Mistress. You had better take responsibility for that as well, you know!”
“Of course, of course!” Kanata sang cheerfully, without much of a sense of gravity about the whole incident at all. “I’ll take full responsibility!”
“Hmm... You’ll look after me for as long as you live?” Elizavett pressed. “Even though I will be of no use to you whatsoever in this form?”
“Yeah!” Kanata chirped.
“A good response, and no hesitation. You truly are the woman I chose as Mistress.” Elizavett didn’t seem terribly surprised by Kanata’s response. Kanata, after all, was someone who had offered a suspicious and frightful vampire her own blood to save the vampire’s life. Kanata was surely not the type to abandon her once she lost her beauty and vampiric might.
“A promise to take care of me for her whole life,” Elizavett said, smiling to herself. “That’s as good as a marriage proposal, is it not?”
“It absolutely is not, you imbecile!” said Zag’giel. “Kanata may have acknowledged you as a companion, but we have not!”
“I will never allow you to be Lady Kanata’s wife!” Fenrir protested. “In the first place, you’re another female!”
Elizavett sighed in exasperation at the pair’s continuing outbursts. “Love knows no species and no gender. You have a narrow mind and a small heart. This is precisely why I can’t stand men!”
“Bold words, newcomer!” said Zag’giel, the fur on his back sticking up like an angry cat.
“You had better rethink that attitude of yours!” Fenrir growled, showing his teeth.
“Kee hee hee!” laughed Elizavett. “You furballs think you can stand in the way of my marriage? I’ll teach you to know your place!”
“That’s our line!” Zag’giel and Fenrir leapt at the offending furball, but Elizavett took to the air, easily dancing out of their reach.
“Kee hee hee! You’ll never catch me! Never! How do you expect to reach me with such short legs, when I can fly in the air? Hmmm?!”
“No!” exclaimed Zag’giel.
“Coward! Get down here!” barked Fenrir.
“Kee hee! Kee hee hee hee hee! I’m too high up to hear you! You’ll have to fly up here if you want to talk to me!”