Hilda hadn't had that particur fshback since before she joined the academy. “I don't want to fight.” Some of the st words He heard before someone shot Him. The feelings always returned with the sudden involuntary immersion into those moments. Memories of the shockingly quiet sound of gunshots and piercing screams from the people panicking around Him. The cold pain of bleeding out on the asphalt and the subtle smell of gunpowder. Hoping His friends in the store were safe, as His vision and consciousness faded with distinct finality. She might have imagined that st part. It's a fuzzy memory.

  She first remembered her death at a demonstration of the empire's newest artillery, six or seven years earlier. The noises and smells of cannonfire acted as the key to remembering her st moments. Luckily, some other affliction upon her family had saved face for her breakdown at that demonstration. Hilda's older sisters were also known for breaking down at strange and unexpected things. The ‘affliction of the DuSonde sisters’; some of the empire's nobility even thought it was a curse on the duchy. Hilda didn't think she had the affliction that Cecilia and Ana did, she just occasionally experienced fshbacks of her death, and was living with grief over the friends and family she had lost in the transmigration. Her sisters had something else going on, she was sure.

  Nevertheless, hearing English for the first time in her new life, followed by the goblin queen speaking English from nowhere was shocking. Then the first real monster woman Hilda had seen in this shit ass fantasy world literally snaked her immacutely beautiful way out of the brush and spoke a trigger for her PTSD. Hilda had a panic attack half undercut by immediate infatuation. It was almost comical how heavily it disarmed her.

  It had all been made worse with Hilda's reflexive pull at her mother's spell, checking how powerful the thing in front of her was. The spell failed to give an estimate because the line snapped. Her mother called it a hole, but Hilda had always thought of them like singurities, snapping a trickle of mana with their gravitation. Verea had warned every one of her children about this reaction. The only things that Hilda's nigh mythical mother had ever seen with power like that were godbeasts - expining something about Dawn - and a thing Verea cimed she was geas-bound to not speak of. The fact that the duchess was allowed to even speak of the geas was suspect, but if true, it was likely something of fae origin. Marc, another husband, had alluded to Hilda that Verea visited the court of the Vexwood once, but he had been very mum with the details.

  All this to say that Dawn might not even realize she was at some unfathomable level of strength compared to their entire expedition.

  Dalia and Sheryl knew something was wrong after she recovered, so Hilda alyed their worries, saying she was good for the trail and that they could talk that night. She still couldn't help listening to Zerel and Dawn talk to each other all day, and it was exaggerated because the two really did draw her eyes. Zerel had made her interest clear before being interrupted by arguably more important matters, and Dawn? Hilda had a… thing for monster girls in her Earth life. Dawn was very much Hilda's type, if she dwelled on it.

  She tried not to dwell, but they were right there, talking about all sorts of interesting things. Over the course of the day she decided that she would have to talk to them. They weren't being very subtle about thinking she could understand them, and Hilda was certain that Dawn might appreciate a second conversational partner. She was pretty sure Dalia, Sheryl and half of the expedition could tell, but she deflected Aramis when he asked about it.

  Hilda wanted to discuss it with her girlfriends first.

  Dalia tried to pull a trick on Hilda as they settled in, asking, “So what were they talking about, Hil?”

  The noblewoman had already made her decision, though, “Zerel was mostly sharing information about the local settlements and the empire. They talked about each other's past and current lives and discussed how strange Dawn's body is. I didn't really listen to everything, but remember our talk with Isra about ‘trans’ people?”

  With Dalia taken aback, Sheryl followed up, “Yeah, the men becoming women and women becoming men through alchemy?”

  “Zerel developed the treatments for herself.”

  Dalia asked, confused, “How did you learn that nguage, Hilda? Where is it from?”

  “One empire to another,” Hilda mumbled in English, before looking her girlfriends in the eyes and speaking Imperial, “I know that nguage, English, because I can remember an entire life as a different person who spoke it. I remember a past life in a different world - or something like that - and I never thought I'd hear it again. I panicked because… because Dawn said something that reminded me of my death.”

  Dalia understood the concept pretty well. She knew about dungeons and intersecting pnes but it was strange to think of a pce that just wasn't connected to the world she lived in. Hilda had a pretty good point of order for her strange tale, given her understanding of, allegedly, another world's nguage, and the elven woman couldn't help wondering what parts Hilda was omitting. She'd have to ask more.

  Sheryl didn't get it very fast. Her life so far simply hadn't involved such high concepts. The idea that Hilda had a life where she died, then a life that suddenly remembered the previous was just bizarre to a recently freed felind like her. She eventually supposed that it's a believable enough story for a noblewoman to be cursed with memories that aren't her own. It was the sort of fairy tale she'd never thought to be involved in, let alone dating.

  Sheryl had never really expected she'd get the freedom to date.

  Both of them comforted Hilda about the awful part. Neither freed woman was without some trauma over their svery, but they literally had no way to directly rete to Hilda's recollection of her own death. Dalia was a little annoyed when Hilda wouldn't expin how exactly she died, but she was leaning more towards a commitment than she had expected with this retionship. She figured she'd hear about it eventually, or try to pressure it out of Hilda when she eventually returns home.

  Sheryl kept Hilda in a hug for a long time.

  Then the questions began. Partway through expining to Dalia that Dawn had been a man with a wife and children, Hilda realized something. She probably shouldn't have outed two trans women like that. There was a reason it had been discouraged on earth.

  She dismissed the thought, figuring it'd be fine, but then she caught herself sanitizing her own past life to remove specific references to her gender. She was just tormented by her peers for not acting like them, not saying that it was the other boys. Hilda had hated how her old society expected her to act, not saying that it was how it expected guys like herself to act. She'd never managed to get a girlfriend, living a life as someone she didn't like being was hard enough.

  What she thought to herself was that she wasn't really trans, though. She had been a boy then, and she was a woman now. So why couldn't she just admit that to her girlfriends? Why did she say that she had different interests from the other girls when she was a child in her past life?

  Hilda did admit one thing, though, “I think Dawn is rather beautiful.”

  Dalia blew air out her nose, “I didn't notice that, given everything else. She's literally a snake, Hil.”

  Sheryl frowned for a bit before agreeing, “I see what you mean but, like, the eyes don't freak you out? All of the eyes? And the tail.”

  “There was a lot of fantastical art in my st life. I had a personal appreciation for depictions of women much like Dawn. She really is stunning. To me, at least. I never thought I'd see a girl like her in this world. Never heard of anything like her while I've lived here.”

  “Wait,” Sheryl said, “you have an infatuation with a snake woman, and I'm a felind…”

  “Don't think about it like that! It's just that you're all girls that are attractive to me and, well, you two insisted on our current arrangement after hearing about my family. Zerel seemed interested, and I started to think about it more before Dawn walked out of the woods and was more beautiful in person than I ever imagined a girl with a body like hers would be. Then she gave me a panic attack.”

  Dalia started ughing, “You're seeing the benefits of your mother's lifestyle, now, aren't you?”

  “I don't want you two to think that you're not enough for me, though! I'm happy to be with either of you, I just-”

  Sheryl surprised both girls by silencing Hilda with a kiss, then whispering, “I can't help that I'll be a bit jealous, but it's not like I said no to being with you and Doll. If you want to pursue someone, then I don't want to be in your way. Okay?”

  Hilda put a hand on the side of Sheryl's face, “A- are you sure, Sherry?”

  Sheryl nodded as Dalia embraced Hilda from behind. “I've been falling for you, Hil,” whispered the catgirl, softly, “It'd be a travesty to see you, Hilda Galea DuSonde, reduce yourself just to account for my jealousy.”

  Hilda chuckled, “Okay Sheryl. Dalia, are you alright with this?”

  “Hmm,” the elf put on a mischievous smirk in Hilda's peripheral, the type of expression Hilda's father had warned her about seeing from fae - even lesser folk like elves. Particurly the lesser ones, he had said. “Well,” Dalia said, “I'm not fond of them having a conversation that excludes the rest of the expedition like that. I know Dawn can't help it, but if you keep giving me juicy gossip about the goblin queen and the serpent woman, then I'll have no issues.”

  Hilda rolled her eyes at the statement. “Of course.”

  Her mother always said elves weren't too different from regur humans, but had a particur propensity towards nosiness and gossip that often motivated seemingly mischievous actions. Something about fae society seemed to encourage interpersonal politicking in that way.

  Maybe Hilda should have a talk with Dalia about it…

  By this point, though, they had already worn themselves out for the night. More discussion would have to come in the morning or the next day. The girls were all tired and they drifted to sleep through mumbled banter.

  In the morning, the expedition got a te start. Something involving Dawn had slowed Zerel's rousing, and the camp hesitated without their leader. Breakfast started shortly anyway, though not before Dalia whispered to Hilda that she had heard quiet crying from the queen's tent. Hilda wasn't really sure what the elf wanted her to do with that information.

  When Zerel and Dawn came out of the big tent, it was pretty clear the monster woman had been crying. Even with her serpentine eyes, she was still puffy and red faced. Hilda supposed she knew what that was about, at least. Just like Hilda had lost her friends, Dawn had lost her family.

  They struck up a conversation over their morning oatmeal after Zerel convened with a couple of her subordinates. Dawn was present, though unable to understand the imperial while she poked at her own bowl. “Aramis, girls,” Zerel started, “didya all sleep well st night?” As the mercenaries gave their affirmatives, Zerel nodded, “I'm expecting more monsters today so we'll have to be on guard.” She turned to Hilda and asked, in English, “Lady DuSonde, are you feeling better today?”

  Hilda sleepily answered, “Yeah sorry about that. Weren't we using… first… names?”

  Everyone was looking at Hilda, who was aghast as she realized what she replied to. She had pnned on breaching the subject but then she just-

  “Oh so you're finally ready to talk! Dawn, meet, what was it? Hilda Galea DuSonde.”

  Dawn smiled over her breakfast, “Pleasure to meet you, Hilda.”

  Hilda huffed, “I'm happy to meet you too, Dawn. Zerel, you- jerk! I was going to talk to you anyway! I just hadn't…”

  As Hilda noticed her own slight quirk, Zerel smirked over at Dalia, speaking in Imperial, “her English is way less cssy than her Imperial. It's pretty funny.”

  The elf snorted, murmuring, “I can kind of tell.”

  “Hmph!” Hilda pouted at Zerel in Imperial, “you haven't even told Dawn who you really are, Queen Zerel. Actually-” Hilda turned to Dawn and switched to English, “Dawn had Zerel told you yet that she is the Queen of the Ademhill cn?”

  Zerel told the serpent, “it's not really a position like that, Dawn. I was elected-”

  and Dawn just ughed.