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Fern was pretty sure that most peoples’ “first time” wasn’t quite like this.
Pretty sure.
Lawine and Kanne lay on either side of her, still half-heartedly bickering with each other, and Fern was far too out of breath to even murmur a rapprochement. Forget speaking, she could barely muster together two coherent thoughts.
If a demon were to attack then, she wasn’t sure she could even remember a basic defensive spell.
Her brain was struggling as she gasped for air to still make sense of what was going on. Or what had been going on. She was sweaty all over, and sticky in ways she hadn’t even previously thought was humanly possible. How innocently naïve she had been but only a few hours earlier.
When she had told Frieren that she had been invited to dinner with Lawine and Kanne—both of them now First Class Mages themselves—she had hardly thought it would end up like this.
After all, dinner hadn’t seemed as though it were a pretense for anything else. They had discussed magic, new spells, travels, and life. Though perhaps it was in discussing life that things had veered more personal.
It wasn’t particularly surprising to learn that Lawine and Kanne, despite how antagonistic they could often be toward one another overtly, had long been in a relationship. What was more surprising was the fact that they presumed a similar sort of “tendency” from her.
Lawine and Kanne had both looked at each other and then back across the dinner table at Fern before Kanne ventured:
“Well it’s just that…we’ve both seen the way you look at women, Fern…and at Frieren.”
The observation came as somewhat of a shock in that moment. In truth, Fern had never consciously thought about it before. But maybe it wasn’t all that odd once she considered it. She had never been interested in men at all; they were like passerbys in her life, largely unremarkable and forgettable. Women, she realized as she was well-meaningly teased, had always drawn the eye more.
And Master Frieren…
Fern couldn’t even bring herself to address that particular line of thought directly in the moment.
Though she would like to blame it on the one cup of wine, it had been her subsequent curiosity, only just unearthed, that had allowed her to be led back to Lawine and Kanne’s shared inn room. They had made it abundantly clear that she needn’t feel pressured, but to Fern’s own surprise, things had easily led from one thing to another…and now, some completely indeterminate amount of time later into the night, she found herself laying sweaty and naked between two equally sweaty and naked women.
Perhaps they had a point after all—she couldn’t imagine laying with a man as she now did alongside Lawine and Kanne.
Not as though Fern read much on these matters either, but it was also certainly nothing like anything in the books she had read.
Of course, part of that was surely Lawine and Kanne and the odd dynamic they brought to everything.
Even now, after all of the physical exertion they had partaken in, they still bickered and argued.
They argued over her attention. Good naturedly. Probably.
“Lawine, Kanne.” They both stopped as soon as she was able to muster words again. “I’m right here. And we just, well, did quite a lot together, so I don’t see what there is to argue about.”
She flushed a bit, somehow more self-conscious about the copious amounts of sex they had now that they were finished.
“Well, it’s not as though we were planning any of this, quite honestly. But as it is, Fern, you’re smart and pretty and mature, and you’ve been recognized as one of the most powerful mages in all the lands—”
“—and you do like women and are definitely fun in bed!”
If Fern hadn’t been blushing at the praise thus far, she certainly was now while Lawine reached over her to smack Kanne for her crudeness. The two tussled briefly, giving Fern a rather spectacular view, before Lawine turned back to look at Fern again.
“Anyway, who in their right mind wouldn’t be flattered by having your attention?”
Oh.
Fern leaned back into the pillow, face still burning as she looked at the ceiling instead. It was a compliment, she knew, but somehow it felt more sobering than anything else. Maybe because the only person it called to mind was the very one who seemed to be an exception to that declaration.
If Fern were not so busied trying to push thoughts of Frieren from her mind, she might have noticed the way that Lawine and Kanne gave each other a knowing and sympathetic look, without even having to speak a word between them.
“Maybe you need a bit more convincing,” teased Kanne, dragging Fern’s thoughts back to the present.
“I agree.” Lawine gave a single, almost solemn nod, and the rolled onto her side so that she had better access to kiss and briefly bite the shell of Fern’s ear.
“Wait a minute! I-I still need to be able to walk later!” Fern tried to protest weakly, her voice warbling and then breaking. She wasn’t entirely exaggerating.
Lawine didn’t even dignify her with a proper response. One hand was splayed almost possessively over Fern’s neck while she kissed her way down the collarbone.
“You’re so pretty when you’re flustered, Fern.”
Kanne was no better, slipping a hand down Fern’s thigh, making her tremble and gasp, even as her legs spread instinctively open.
“Besides, you can always spell yourself to fly in the morning if you think walking is too much trouble.”
After that, Fern found there was not much thinking involved at all.
Something changed after that night for Fern.
There was a certain awareness of herself, or about herself. Even if she had always preferred women, she had never before been fully conscious of the fact; now, it was something she could no longer wholly ignore.
Fern wasn’t quite sure at what point her feelings toward her master had morphed into something more than platonic. Perhaps it had been during their original journey to Aureole, but in the grander scheme of things, it didn’t particularly matter. What mattered was the unavoidable awareness of that fact now.
If Frieren knew or suspected (either of Fern’s crush or of Fern’s newly-found preference for women), she never said anything. Fern had reason to doubt that her master even guessed. Frieren had never expressed even a passing fancy in either sex or romance. And besides, that first time Fern and wobbled back after a night spent with Lawine and Kanne—her body aching pleasantly in places and ways she had never even conceived of before—Frieren had merely quirked her head and commented that it was best if Fern didn’t get involved in the middle of Lawine and Kanne’s physical scuffles.
Fern had been too embarrassed at both the reality and the misunderstanding to even feel grateful over Frieren’s ignorance, and she had certainly never bothered to clarify after the fact.
Perhaps it was to be expected. She remembered Frieren had commented once, off-handedly, how elves had almost no sex drive or interest in romance, which was only further leading to their own slow extinction after the Demon King’s attempts to eradicate them all. And it didn’t seem to be an exaggeration.
If anything, the closest that Frieren had ever shown to interest in anyone had been Himmel, and how was Fern so supposed to compete with the memory of a hero who had died long before she had even been born? Not that she wanted to compete, but it was hard not to hold herself up the legendary figure.
It was hard not to see the faint, soft smile Frieren would get on occasion when reminiscing about her one-time companion.
And it was hard not for Fern to feel like something was painfully squeezing her heart whenever she caught such a rare glimpse of her master looking like that.
It was hard not to feel lonely.
And feeling lonely was something she could no longer pretend otherwise to herself around Frieren.
Fern might be apprentice to Frieren the Slayer and the youngest First-Class mage in history, but she was also only human. A young, lovely young human woman who couldn’t help but occasionally succumb to said loneliness.
It wasn’t a too-often thing. Perhaps a few times a year Fern couldn’t help but give in to herself. And she almost never initiated. Instead, it was usually a woman propositioning her first, and if the mood happened to be right—if Fern was feeling just lonesome enough and it wasn’t too much of a hassle to slip away without Frieren noticing…well.
She was only human.
There wasn’t a particular “type” Fern had either. Buxom, muscular, older, peer, commoner or nobility…it was never an unpleasant time, but it always seemed as though little more than a temporary balm. Fern was always polite afterward, whether it was the same night or the morning after. What physical intimacy was exchanged under moonlit whispers and kisses had no bearing once the sun had risen, she had shrugged on spell-clean robes, and taken her leave.
But she could never bring herself to stomach the idea of anything more than the periodic, single-night companionship she would take refuge in. The problem was not with the lovely women who provided her a night of intimacy; the problem was within herself, she knew. Or right next to her on most days.
Just like suppressing her own mana, Fern learned to suppress her feelings, or to occasionally indulge in escapism from them when it became too much.
And it worked well enough, at least for a time.
Fern was content enough to maintain the status quo, traveling alongside her master as other meetings and partings occurred, but Frieren’s presence and Fern’s feelings for her remaining steady all the while.
She had always criticized Frieren for thinking of entire decades as being inconsequential turning of time, and yet in the blink of an eye, years abruptly passed by. Fern looked at herself in the mirror one day, surprised. She had long since grown out of her teenage years and into full adulthood. Meanwhile, Frieren didn’t look a day older than when a nine-year-old Fern had first met her in the forest.
And this was the reality of their lives. Fern might live anywhere for another fifty or even eighty years, if she was healthy enough, until she was old and gray and hunched over from age; and Frieren would look no different in five hundred years. Fern’s life would pass by, the same as Himmel’s or Heiter’s, come and gone like the turning of a single page for a long-lived eleven mage.
The transient reality of this realization made Fern grow sombre. She briefly fingered the bracelet Stark had bought her for the first birthday they had celebrated together, neither of them aware at the time of the meaning of the mirrored lotus. As she rubbed her thumb over the polished silver, she thought only of the ring that Frieren so covetously kept, gifted from Himmel.
Suddenly, she understood why the Hero—a man she had never known but only knew of— had bared his heart to an otherwise oblivious elf, even knowing that said elf would never respond in kind.
Maybe she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life keeping this sort of secret of her own feelings.
Even so, it wasn’t an immediate thing to act upon after that second sort of realization.
Fern may have fought demons and traveled to Heaven, but she had been trained for that all of her life; no one had ever taught her how to approach and manage matters of her heart.
There was just never a good time for it, or so she told herself. Whenever she tried to steady herself and confess to Frieren, there always seemed to be something else. Some quest to attend to, some person to talk to, sleep or meals to be had. Or Frieren distracted entirely by something else. And every time, the moment slipped by and nothing changed.
Another lifetime might pass at this rate, and Fern would be on her own death bed just like all of Frieren’s hero companions before her, with no one to blame for her own indecision but herself.
Just as with her first time with Lawine and Kanne, the change came when Fern least expected it.
They had stopped in Strahl for a bit; a time to catch up on news, to look for new magical items and grimoires, and to decide their next steps they might take. In short, a typical stop for a week or two.
After a day spent shopping for new supplies, Fern had wandered the city close to sunset, searching for her wayward master to collect for dinner.
She found Frieren sitting alone by a public garden, wholly focused on her most recent grimoire procurement. Despite the fact that dusk had fallen, the rising full moon and the summer warmth clearly left her in no rush to finish her reading.
Moonrise made her white hair shine in a halo, ethereal and enchanting alike, something wholly normal and yet seemingly magical.
Fern felt something catch in her throat then. Her heart stuttered within her chest, warm with affection and longing alike.
Frieren, of course, already was aware of Fern, despite not having looked up once.
“Did you already have somewhere planned for dinner? I’m almost done with this chapter. This book has some interesting minor spells for repelling insects we’ll have to try when we next travel through forest.”
She should have just nodded and told Frieren where they were going for dinner. Instead, heart suddenly on her tongue, Fern stepped close. She felt briefly possessed, her limbs moving of their own accord, careening madly toward some unseen cliff edge that she had hitherto only skirted around.
(There was no Heiter now to pull her back from the brink.)
Frieren looked up from the book then, appearing marginally guilty. “I know it’s later than usual, but there is still plenty of time to go get supper…”
Fern took a breath, and then took the proverbial step into thin air.
“Master Frieren, we’ve traveled together for quite some time. I know it isn’t much by elven lifetimes, but I have known you now for most of my life, as my teacher and master, yes…but also as more.”
Fern knelt down, putting herself at a height disadvantage to Frieren.
Whereas someone else might have protested or questioned, Frieren merely watched Fern. Only the faintest widening her impassive eyes otherwise indicated her curiosity; she was waiting to see what would happen next.
How Fern wanted to reach out, to push aside the grimoire and take Frieren’s hands in her own; but she was too frightened to. It was already enough to remind herself to breathe, to remind herself to keep her mana still and suppressed, to give herself the courage to keep speaking now that she had started. So she clasped her hands tightly together, and bared her heart.
“Master Frieren, I love you. I love how you love magic, how your favorite spell is to create a field of flowers. I love how you have no interest in fame or fortune and recognition. I love how you can pout and be childish, how I can’t trust you to handle the money, how even after being alive for a thousand years you have terrible organization and are practically impossible to wake up in the morning…even if it infuriates me at times, too.
“I love how you care so deeply and quietly about the people around you, even if you never know how to say it. And I love that I was given the chance in this life to know you, even if you live for millennia more and forget me entirely…and I…”
Fern took a deep breath, her gaze finally and fully falling downward to stare at the cobblestone beneath them. She had already said enough.
“I wanted you to know that. That I love you. That’s all.”
She kept her head bowed low, waiting for the inevitable confusion and—by proxy—rejection. Fern was ready for it now, though. After years of avoiding it all, trying to ignore her own fear and longing alike, she was ready. Perhaps it was selfish of her, but she wanted Frieren to know. She wanted Frieren to know that she was loved, that Fern loved her, even if it was only to ever be a one-sided affair.
In this regard, she felt a certain kinship to Himmel the Hero that she had never before experienced. They were the same in that sense: both giving their hearts away for nothing in return.
As it was, in the worst case, they could part ways in adventuring if it proved too awkward. Frieren never had a reasonable sense for passage of time, so Fern could take a score of years if she needed it to put herself back together.
“Oh…” Frieren exhaled softly, her tone and inflection no different than if someone were giving her options for dinner. “That was faster than I expected. I thought you would take another decade or three before you decided to say something to me.”
Of every scenario that Fern had prepared herself for mentally, this was not one of them. Her gaze shot upward from the ground, and she stood before she even realized it.
“You…you knew?”
“Of course I knew.” Frieren’s long ears twitched slightly. She lifted her chin a fraction, looking almost proud of herself. “I’ve learned how to read humans better now.”
Oh, she was very proud of herself. Proud of having somehow correctly guessed the measure of Fern’s feelings despite otherwise being the most socially obtuse person Fern had ever known. Was this the result of them having reached Aureole those years before? Of Frieren finally getting to see Himmel one last time?
“How long?” Fern felt herself blink dumbly, asking the only thing that came to mind.
“Hm…” Frieren hummed and swayed a bit, looking far too much like a cat with cream. “I wasn’t entirely sure at first. But it’s only been a few years now.”
“Only a few…! And you didn’t say anything?!”
Fern felt mortified. Years of her having village one-night stands with women and trying to hide her own walk of shame back to Frieren’s side every time…and her master knew all along?
Frieren gave a wholly unconcerned shrug.
“I thought it would be best if you figured things out on your own time. What’s a few decades when it comes to learning?”
As if that wasn’t the most typical Frieren thing to say. Fern felt her blood pressure spike then.
“You…you…!” She had to fight the urge to stomp her foot. “Master Frieren! Not all of us live for centuries! Why did you let me waste so much time?”
Fern couldn’t help but nearly cry out at the end. She was a maelstrom of confused emotions now, and struggling to sort through them all.
“Was it really wasted?” Only someone who had lived as long as Frieren could ask that question so calmly.
They both knew the answer to it, just as they both knew Fern would hardly dignify the question by responding. She settled instead with clenching her hands into fists at her side, looking aside as she tried and failed to gather up some semblance of her own tattered dignity. What a fool she had made of herself!
“You’re pouting.” Frieren reached up and gently poked Fern’s cheek, grinning mischievously. “I haven’t seen you pout like that in years, since you were still a kid.”
Fern felt her face flame with embarrassment. She forced herself immediately to stop sulking—something that, those years ago, she would not have been able to manage.
“I’m not a kid anymore, Frieren.” She hadn’t been, not for a long time by human standards. But elves… “And I don’t want you to think of me as a child.”
“How do you want me to think of you then?”
Frieren was kicking her feet, looking vaguely impish as she yet again somehow pushed the onus of everything back onto Fern.
And there it was. Fern was suddenly confronted with the reality of the present, and feeling utterly disarmed by it. She had gone into this expecting one thing—being certain she had a full understanding and prediction of the outcomes; yet now she was utterly confounded instead.
Her heart thundered loudly in her chest, trepidation with the first hint of something that felt impossibly like hope. Fern was acutely aware that although Frieren was many, many centuries older, it was Fern who was the more experienced one. It was Fern that Frieren was waiting on to take the lead.
(Or they could just as easily spend another ten years staring at each other, casually stuck at an impasse.)
Slowly, cautiously, Fern reached out with both hands. She pushed back the stray locks of Frieren’s soft, white hair. An innocuous thing on its own—how many years had she spent washing Frieren’s hair for her? Drying and combing it (and occasionally cleaning out mimic saliva), tying the silky locks back before the continued on their journeys. But now she brushed aside the stray wisps of hair to do something else entirely.
Her hands cradled Frieren’s face, tilting her gaze upward.
There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the way Frieren looked up at her: calm and clear-eyed, while it was Fern who found her breath shaking and unsteady.
This was the most frightened she had ever felt in life.
(But she refused to come this far only to come this far.)
Steeling as much courage as she could muster, Fern cupped Frieren’s cheeks and then leaned in. Her own hair slipped past her shoulders as she tilted her head downward, creating a purple veil of privacy while she gently and reverently pressed her lips to those of Frieren.
When Fern ended the kiss, she pulled back just enough to study the face of her longtime master and crush.
“Is that okay?” She whispered, and she was terrified of what the answer might be.
Frieren had always been difficult to read most times, and Fern couldn’t spot any of the normal signs she had grown experienced in looking out for in prior partners—there was no blush on Frieren’s cheeks, no shiver trembling over her skin or gaze darting down to Fern’s lips. Her eyes were as bright and sharp as ever, unafraid and yet impossible to read.
The lack of any clear indicators had Fern feeling ill, cold and hot by unpleasant turns as she briefly wondered, yet again, just how badly she may have misjudged things.
But then Frieren smiled, soft and sweet and in a way that Fern had only ever seen when her master reminisced about Himmel. She reached up to keep Fern close, until their foreheads were pressed together and their noses brushed against one another. Her long, soft lashes fluttered as she closed her eyes and hummed.
“It is if it’s you, Fern.”