Liath and Hyacinth cuddle up in the small room for a timeless time - perhaps a few minutes, perhaps a few hours - and drift together, feeling each other’s bodies so close, both deeply satisfied, both afraid to speak let it break the perfect peace that’s fallen over both of them. Everything is so comfortable, so right, so pure, that it seems a shame to sully it with words.
But inevitably, there is eventually a knock at the door.
Hyacinth stirs from where she’s wrapped up in Liath’s arms, and lets out a heavy sigh. “You had better go see who that is.”
Liath nods, and gets up from bed, stretching her limbs. “Coming,” she calls, and pads across the room in her altogether to go answer the door.
When she opens it, sure enough, it’s Mica who pops her head in. “I just wanted to check in and see how you two were getting along —” Her gaze snaps to the pink-colored and still glowing seed on the covers. “— and I see you’ve done better than I expected!” She waggles her eyebrows. “My seedseeker senses tell me that’s stingseed on the covers there, so with your permission I’ll put it in a vial for you two to keep for ter?”
Liath rubs the back of her head. “I, ah, must confess I wasn’t really thinking of the economic implications…” She looks over at Hyacinth. “Do you mind, um, dove?”
Hyacinth ughs, sits up, and balls up the covers and tosses them at Mica. “Sure, if you think you can get it out of the bedsheets.”
Mica catches the covers in one hand, and turns them over a few times to get to the pink-stained section. Running her hand over the material, the pink-glowing seed soaking the sheets streams up, over her hand, and into the vial, which she stoppers and presents to Liath. “There,” she says. “It’s yours, as the domme who caused the pain. Stingseed can only be extracted from sexual encounters where one participant came entirely from pain.”
Liath looks over her shoulder at Hyacinth. “I think this should go to you,” she says. “I’ll have plenty of opportunity to make more money in the coming days, and it was you who did the genuinely hard part.” She crosses the room and presses the vial into Hyacinth’s hand.
Hyacinth takes the vial in both hands and bows a little over it. “I, ah, thank you.” She moves to her bandolier and tucks the vial into one of the loops near the hip.
“Keep the vial,” Mica says. “Consider it an investment; stingseed goes for about two steel per vial these days, so giving you the tools to harvest it regurly should help you two get established.” She looks back and forth between Hyacinth and Liath. “So,” she says with a small smile. “How much magic did you two make?”
Hyacinth rubs the back of her head. “Two ichor, a euphoria and a numinosity.”
“The same, but with two euphoria instead of two ichor.” Liath raises her eyebrows.
Mica cps lightly. “Wonderful to hear. Finding numinosity so early is a great sign of compatibility between the two of you. I think this may be the start of a beautiful partnership.” She stretches. “So that puts you two at…?”
Hyacinth brings up her status window to check.
[Magical Charge Status]3 charges Ichor2 charges Euphoria1 charge Numinosity
“Still a long way to go till Limitless,” Hyacinth reports. “Though I’m a little less than a third of the way to Enhancement and making sure my soul sticks.”
Liath nods. “I had no charges before I started here,” she reports. “So we’re going to have to spend more time together if we want to both stay.”
Mica nods as well. “Your first priority should be making sure you two stick,” she says. “But since you can’t have sex every hour of the day, I recommend you take that vial of stingseed to market and see what you can get for it. It ought to make you a couple of steel at least.”
“Thank you,” Hyacinth says. “We’ll think that over.”
“For the moment, though,” Mica says crossing the room to put the bnket back on the bed, “I need you two to clear out of this room so a new housepet who wants a dorm room can have it. These rooms are meant as living spaces, not pces for random guild members to have sex.”
Hyacinth nods, and gets up from the bed. “Alright,” she says. “We’ll clear out.”
Liath takes Hyacinth’s hand, and squeezes it. “Yeah,” she says. “Let’s get moving.”
“One st thing,” Hyacinth says. “Mica, during the sex, I - unlocked some kind of ability -”
“Yes,” Mica says. “A move. They’re a form of learnable magic - natural sex abilities that stem from the soul. Some of them are granted by genders, others you can come with innately. Most people have at least one of them, and I suspected that if you had one, it would be Fantasy Surge.” She raises an eyebrow. “But what moves you get depends heavily on what you need in your sex life first, what your heart calls out for. I didn’t want to jinx it by mentioning it beforehand.”
Hyacinth ducks her head. “Thank you,” she says. “With that we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Have fun at the market,” Mica says. “There’s a lot to see for a newbie!”
“We will,” Liath says. “Ta ta.”
~*~
Outside the guild in the public square full of petgirls, Liath and Hyacinth snag a seat on the pillows together and take a moment to take stock.
“So,” Hyacinth says. “Mica says we should sell this stingseed, but I don’t actually know what I even want to spend the money on. Guild dues, I guess, at the end of the month? If we make stingseed five times that’s my dues covered; I don’t know what the situation is on your end.”
Liath rubs the back of her head. “You only owe ten steel? My guild charges twenty-five. Says something about the retive wealth of dommes versus subs here, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Hyacinth says. “It really does. So we’d need to…” She interleaves her hands together. “It’s about three ichor to the steel, so we’d have to make… One hundred and five ichor? In a month? That seems way too high.”
“Euphoria’s products sell for more,” Liath says. “It’s about three euphoria to two steel.”
Hyacinth nods. “Okay, so every time we have sex we generate… About one steel between the two of us, which goes up to maybe three steel if we make stingseed. So if half the time we have painful sex and half the time we have pleasurable sex, we’ll make about two steel per session. So we’d have to have sex…” She starts to count on her fingers.
[Roughly 17 and a half times in a month.]
“More Bien says seventeen and a half times. ”
“That’s true,” Liath says, “But we’d also have to have sex at least another ten times to make the euphoria and ichor for us to stick. More, to get us our respective gender abilities. So…”
“We probably need to make money off more than just sex,” Hyacinth says. “That’s the safe move, anyway.”
“I agree,” Liath says. “What we’ve been talking about is — raw products, basically. Selling raw gss made from void-tearing, or wool made from lifeweaving, and so on and so on. If we do more processing steps, then the products will be worth more — if we can turn out steel directly from void-tearing, or if we can make more refined products from life-weaving, or if we can sell the stingseed for more or make more esoteric varieties of seed - all of that will be worth something. And then there’s the matter of the actual production professions, fucksmith and so on…”
“Yeah,” Hyacinth says. “There’s still a lot to figure out. But I think we’ll be okay if we put our heads together. And I think selling the stingseed now, when we don’t even know what we can use it for…”
“Might be a little rash… But we do only have the one vial to put seed in…” Liath frowns. “I think we should buy a proper bandolier for vials, like Mica has, and enough vials that we can save seed for the future. I pn to go into polymerization, so being able to collect samples might be seriously helpful for our future pns.”
Hyacinth frowns. “I don’t really want to spend anything when we’re going to have trouble making rent as it is, but - maybe we really do need to spend money to make money. And it is probably only two steel…”
“It’ll be okay,” Liath says. “Trust me.”
“Okay,” Hyacinth says. “I’ll trust you. The market’s this way.” She gets up from the pillows, and gestures in the direction of the market stalls.
Liath comes and takes Hyacinth’s hand, and they walk on together.
~*~
Returning to the busy market square that she met Alika in just a few short hours ago, Hyacinth’s gaze goes around to the sheer variety of women on dispy. While the members of the Housepet gender are easy to spot — all of them are some form of animal-girl, and tend to be led on leashes or be wearing some other form of bondage that’s retively easy to move in — there are dozens of other kinds of people on dispy: foxgirls who don’t seem submissive, swathed in silk; part-demon women without Liath’s spined cock or slitted eyes; dryads with gleaming, slow-flowing amber nectar for their sexual fluids; goblin shortstacks engaged in fierce and competitive sex with butterfly-winged women whose mouths sport five-foot long prehensile tongues; bulky wolf-women with muscles that could lift a car; and a few women that seem almost human, if not for their unusual beauty and their gold and silver-limned eyes.
Many of the people in the market bear bandoliers or hip belts of vials, filled with shimmering pink seed. One of them, a silver-haired woman with pointed ears wearing a high-slit kimono, is even haggling over a price for a particur vial with Alika.
As Hyacinth and Alika watch the crowd, they catch sight of another housepet who’s sitting cross-legged with a bolt of woven cloth in her p. Pink energy streams from her hands into the cloth, and as it washes over it, the cloth duplicates at its edges, slowly drawing out a long ribbon of the bolt as its maker concentrates on the energies at py.
“There’s a lot here I didn’t know to look for before,” Hyacinth says, crossing her arms over her breasts. “I’m not sure where to start, even. Maybe start by getting a general sense of prices…? I’m not sure.”
Liath scratches her head. “You passed through this market before, right? Have you talked to anyone here before?”
“Yeah,” Hyacinth says. “Alika, the bird-woman over there.” She points. “She gave me a spare A1 key for my cuffs free of charge. She might be a decent pce to start.”
“It’s as good a pce as any to begin,” Liath says. “Let’s go.”
“Alright,” Hyacinth says. And she lets Liath part the crowd for her.
They walk up to Alika’s stall just as the silver-haired woman is finishing her transaction, and Hyacinth does a self-conscious bow to the bird woman. “Hello again!”
“Hello,” Alika says, a smile coming to her lips. “And who is this you’ve brought with you?”
“My domme,” Hyacinth says. “Liath. We’ve just met, but, well… We really hit it off. And we made something we’d like to get your thoughts on…”
She pulls the vial of stingseed from her bandolier, and holds it out so Alika can see it. “Stingseed,” she says. “I’m told it’s worth about two steel per vial. What’s it used for?”
“Ah,” Alika says. “It’s a polymerization ingredient for PVC, primarily, with some other uses in pleather and as a low-end power source for stinging toys. Bloodstone is the proper power source you get in high-quality toys of that kind, but it’s expensive, and some people prefer to buy lower-end models that rely on seed as fuel. So there’s always a secondary market for more of it, but it’s also not exactly rare given the number of masochists that are out there. I’d call it a solid, dependable commodity, but occasionally there’s lows and highs, as with anything that relies on a specific kink.”
“Thank you,” Hyacinth says. “That was very informative. If I offered to sell it to you, how much would you give me for it?”
“Two steel, and three gss for the vial it comes in. That’s a fair price. Some people will try to buy the whole thing for two steel, vial included, but I try to deal more honestly than that.” Alika shrugs. “Normally I wouldn’t buy the vial off you, I’d provide my own, but I happen to be short at the moment.”
“I see,” Liath says. “So for a steel you can buy about three vials?”
“Five if you get them in bulk,” Alika confirms. “But you probably have better things to spend your money on at the moment, given that I see you don’t have a bandolier of your own, Liath, and I don’t see any tools for a production trade in yours, Hyacinth.”
“Fair enough,” Hyacinth says. “How much is a good bandolier?”
“About a steel in materials and about another two steel in bor.” Alika spreads her hands. “If you’re trying to get one within the budget of a single vial of stingseed…” She shakes her head. “Better to pick up a few more vials and use the bandolier Hyacinth has, I’d guess. But it’s your lives.”
“Thank you for your opinions,” Liath says. “They’re genuinely very helpful. Do you know any wholesalers who sell vials?”
“They’re a common exercise for new Void-Tearers,” Alika says. “There’s a stall across the market that sells them in bulk, ten for two steel. Tell them Alika sent you and you may get a small discount.” She points across the market to a pnt-woman who rises from a rge, elegant flower. “Rose will get you set up.”
“Thank you,” Hyacinth adds. “Then I think I’ll sell you this vial of stingseed right now and we’ll pick up those other vials right away.” She touches her bandolier, feeling where it has loops for vials to settle snugly into.
Liath nods. “It’s a sensible investment. Your bandolier can fit what, a half-dozen? And the rest can go in your pouch.”
“Yeah,” Hyacinth says. “Seems sensible to invest in the tools to make money, yes?”
Liath nods. “It’s a start.” She takes the vial of stingseed and offers it to Alika. “Two steel three gss for the vial and the seed, I believe was the deal?” Pink light rises from her heart, the offer being made official.
Alika nods. “Done.” Her dart pieces Liath’s cloud, and she hands over two rge steel coins and three smaller gss ones, all circur with square holes in the middle. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
Liath passes the money to Hyacinth, and Hyacith puts the gss away in her pouch. Then they cross the market together to Rose.
“Afternoon, Rose,” Liath says to the flower-petaled proprietor. “Alika sent us. We’re a pair of new transmigrators and we’re trying to get started with seed-seeking. Do you think you can part with a set of vials for us for a little less?”
Rose beams. “New faces! It’s always so good to meet new people. Yes, I think I can easily knock a few gss off for you two to get set up initially. How does one steel eight gss for ten vials sound?” Pink mist rises in front of her, the deal on offer presented for completion.
Hyacinth looks at Liath, and Liath looks at Hyacinth, then Hyacinth nods. “Done.” Her dart pierces Rose’s mist, and she hands over the two steel coins they just made. In return Rose reaches over behind herself and hands Hyacinth a small balsawood tray full of ten slim vials.
“Thank you!” Hyacinth chirps, and she slips a half-dozen of the vials into her bandolier’s empty slots, then pces the small tray with its remaining four vials into her pouch. “Pleasure doing business.”
“Here’s your change, come back anytime!” Rose says, a bubble of joy in her voice. She passes Hyacinth two gss coins, and goes on to the next customer.
“Well then,” Liath says. “So quickly our money’s run out. Five gss left between the two of us.”
“Actually,” Hyacinth says, and pulls the small string of gss coins out of one of her bandolier’s pockets. “It looks like we might have a steel here between our change and what the previous owner of this body left me.” She threads her new gsses onto the string, then tucks it back into her bandolier.
Liath nods. “Let’s not spend it all in one pce. I need to eat, you need to eat, we should both go back to our guilds and make use of their respective dining setups rather than spending money on food here.”
Hyacinth nods firmly. “Makes perfect sense. I…” She ducks her head. “This was really nice. See you again after supper?”
Liath reaches out and shoofs Hyacinth’s hair. “Of course, you darling little kitten.”
“I’m a fox!”
“Fox, cat, you’re a pet either way, does it really matter?”
“Hmph!” But there’s no fire in Hyacinth’s eyes, despite all that she crosses her arms and stamps her foot. A moment ter, she breaks down giggling, and hugs Liath hard. “I only met you today, but I already feel like I’ll miss you when you go. Come back soon, alright?”
“Alright,” Liath says. “I’ll do my best to.”
And with that, the two women part ways, each off back to their own respective guild.
