As she heard them cackle at some joke she had missed, Dawn worried whether Hilda and Zerel were pying off of each other’s worse habits. The goblin queen occasionally showed a maniacal side that scared Dawn enough that she wasn't worried about Zerel's intentions or goals as much as she was worried about the fate of anyone who happened to be in the way. Simirly, Hilda was a very reasonable girl with a good head on her shoulders that Dawn trusted save for the moments of bitterness that shone in her eyes, betraying just how much Hilda hated the injustices of the empire she was born into.

  By comparison, their other companions seemed simpler. Sheryl was enjoying her recent freedom as much as she was enjoying her first real retionship. Dalia struck Dawn as adept, mischievous, prideful, and healing from the trauma of her abduction. The goblins were all pleased to be accompanying their queen, with the exception of the other witch, Isra, who was exasperated at her apparent role of pying handmaiden to Zerel. During her time in Ademhill, Dawn had found the cn and the coven to be fascinating in how they functioned quite a lot like a big family, though she was scandalized when Zerel admitted that her retionship with Ramel occasionally had… sacious benefits.

  The lengthy cart ride was going to afford Dawn all the time in the world to ponder the situation she had gotten herself into and the people she had surrounded herself with. She worried that she had just tched onto the first people she had found, but it was hard to dispute that there was some reason to stick with either Hilda or Zerel, since the two were the only people she could freely communicate with. Her Imperial was quickly getting better, but it would probably be a few more months until her vocabury was suitably sized. There was a further argument that the three reincarnated women were fated to meet in one way or another, but Dawn usually didn’t put stock in that sort of thing.

  That was before she became some sort of mythical creature, though.

  With that thought, Dawn remembered her pn for the trip. The girls were going to help her learn Imperial when they had time, but everyone was on guard while they were on the edge of the frontier wilderness, making it a good time to practice with the Eye. She just needed to exhibit a reasonable amount of care with regards to how much strength she put into it. Easy.

  She managed to barely open the Eye without issue, and took a look around herself. The cart interior wasn’t particurly interesting, but she could see the effects of the wards Hilda and the Ademhill witches had pced to stop any prying eyes from looking inside by magical means. The wards resisted her attempts to scry outside, but Dawn’s Eye pushed through easily, unbound by the rules of mortal magic.

  She adopted a birds eye view on their procession, and again wondered if it would’ve been better to make the wagon smaller so that it’d look less conspicuous than the carnival carriage monstrosity of bck wood they’d assembled. She wasn’t about to compin, since it was extra room for her tail on the weeks-long journey, and Sheryl had seemed awfully excited to contribute with her carpentry skills. It was something Dawn still wanted to talk about with the catgirl, since she had done some woodworking as a hobby in her past life.

  On a whim, she brought her disjointed vision closer to Sheryl and Dalia. They were talking with each other, but as Dawn’s perspective approached, the cat’s ears flickered and the elf became alert as they went quiet. Then Sheryl said something - Dawn could only see remotely so she wasn’t sure what - and Dalia nodded before they both rexed a little. As they began to talk again, Dawn looked away, miffed at the response.

  She was sure that she was doing this right. She wasn’t using the eye with the same intense concentration as before, so why could they tell? When she looked at the goblins, Dawn realized that the rest of their caravan was none the wiser, even when she looked closer like she had earlier. Hilda and Zerel didn’t notice her gaze, either, and Dawn formed a simple theory. Elves and felind must be more sensitive to her attention than others.

  Any thoughts about testing the theory were dropped as she watched Zerel and Hilda. They weren’t talking much, but they sat together at the driver’s seat with the occasional word passing between each other. Dawn had half a mind to try and read their lips, but instead she started inspecting the goblin queen’s face closer, once again struck by her shining gold eyes and confident demeanor. Zerel’s soft looking lips parted as she spoke, revealing pointed teeth.

  Dawn was grateful for Zerel’s company and support. The queen kept helping her handle bouts of grief and made time to spend with Dawn while they were in Ademhill, even though she had her own duties to attend to. She had invited Dawn to stay with her in the royal manor - one of the only residences big enough - then brought a mattress and bnkets to the living room so they could spend the nights together. It was almost like they were having a weekend sleepover, and Dawn couldn’t help but appreciate that Zerel gave her an experience she’d missed during her life on Earth. Perhaps unintentionally, since Zerel’s stated intent was to help Dawn through her loneliness and grief. It was rather sweet of the busy queen to do so, though.

  When Zerel frowned, it broke Dawn out of her daze, and she realized that she had been staring rather closely for a minute or more without regard for her intensity. As the hobgoblin stood up and turned around, Dawn closed the Eye. Pulling open the door to peer in, Zerel called, “I can feel ya lookin’ at me, Dawn. Everything okay?”

  Feeling like a child caught getting into something she wasn’t allowed, Dawn apologized, “Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry, I was just trying to look around without people noticing. I, uh- my bad.”

  Giving her a dashing grin and stepping inside, Zerel retorted, “Okay, sunshine, just try not ta alert anybody outside our group. We should arrive in a couple hours. We can see the tower already.”

  Feeling her nose wrinkle, Dawn asked, “Are you sure our pn for the city is a good idea? Can’t Hilda just funt her authority to dodge the inspection?”

  “She can,” Zerel’s grin dropped, “but Lord Keln is likely to respond to that move, and we don’t want to deal with his interference on our way to Sondegürd. Apparently the lord o’ Beacon is fightin’ to stop prince Tobias from taking over the frontier, and since Hilda’s sister is engaged ta Tobias, the margrave might try ta fuck with us anyway. Which is why Hilda’s girlfriends’re goin with ya.”

  “Because of the sve thing, right?” Dawn grimaced.

  Zerel grimaced back, “yeah. We don’t wanna get caught up here, and this’s the only checkpoint that’s likely ta cause problems.” She sighed, pcing a hand on Dawn’s tail, “I know it seems risky, but I promise I can take care o’ myself. I’m more worried about you, but I trust Dalia to keep ya outta view, and Sheryl’s a good kitty.” Zerel smirked at her description, “Okay?”

  Matching the smirk, Dawn nodded, “Okay.”

  An hour and a half ter, they pulled the wagon off of the road, and when Hilda knocked the signal, Dawn slithered through the trapdoor. Sheryl and Dalia were waiting for her in the brush, hidden from the tower’s view, and they slipped into the woods under the cover of twilight. The cat and the serpent followed the elf’s instructions, sneaking their way around the city while trying to avoid notice.

  It was a stressful couple of hours.

  Ultimately, no one noticed them, and they didn’t even have any close calls given the walled nature of Beacon. Few people were on the roads, and less were in the wilderness. Dawn had enough practice with the Eye to occasionally peer ahead of them and check for anything that would cause trouble, and Dalia had already spent weeks sneaking around the frontier unnoticed. None of which changed the fact that stealthily making their way north required concentration and care that Sheryl and Dawn weren’t accustomed to. Both of them had instincts for this, yes, but not experience using them.

  Tension lessened with distance as they finally moved away from the city and the watchful eye of its tower. A whispered conversation started, then gradually became a murmur as they looked for a good site to hunker down for the night. Dawn told Sherry about a few of her past life’s wood projects - mostly shelves and picture frames - and the felind was surprisingly interested in hearing about various tools from earth. Dalia was less engaged while she searched for a safe spot but she admitted to having done a fair bit of whittling to kill time on watch as a ranger.

  They settled on a gulch with a toppled tree at the bottom for their camp, quickly constructing a lean-to fromleafy branches to partially disguise the structure before eating cold rations for dinner. The smaller girls had brought bedding in their packs, but there had been no hope of bringing adequate coverage for Dawn. She coiled up with her torso under the shelter, then Dalia and Sheryl put their bedrolls next to her, and they tried to sleep.

  Rest didn’t come so easily, though, and a little more conversation was inevitable.

  “Why were you looking at us earlier?” Sheryl asked quietly.

  Dawn fiddled with her hands, “You knew that was me? I was practicing with the Eye.”

  “There’s not a lot of things that would watch us like that and then suddenly stop.” Dalia expined, “You’re probably the only thing in the area that would invoke that feeling.”

  “Oh. No one else even noticed. Well, Zerel did but that was a mistake on my part.”

  Sherry’s ears perked, “How’d ya mess up?”

  “I stared too long and too hard.”

  Snorting, Dalia teased, “Did you get entranced by the beauty of the goblin queen, Dawn?”

  Squirming from the pressure, Dawn acquiesced, “A little. She's nice to me and is easy on the eyes… Do you think they'll be okay?”

  “Hilda’s strong,” Sherry nodded, “they should be alright!”

  Dawn found her unquestioning confidence in Hilda to be blinding enough that she chose to close her eyes.

  “She holds back, too. I can kind of tell.”

  “Oh yeah! You asked, and she said she was ‘disguising the level of her power’. That was funny.”

  Softly giggling, Dawn smiled. She enjoyed listening to the banter between her two friends.

  “Her position should be enough, anyway. Even given Verea's age… Dawn?”

  “I think she's falling asleep, Doll. Do you need help mo-?”

  When Dawn started to awaken, her budding consciousness was tinged with confusion. She had become accustomed to waking up tangled with Zerel, but this morning she could feel two bodies in her coils. One was tense and breathing heavily while the other’s insistent shifting had roused her in the first pce. She heard whispering but wasn’t yet awake enough to process the Imperial words.

  The pair had just begun rexing as Dawn zily reached down to touch a shoulder and orient herself. She accidentally pced her hand on the stiff one’s head, which was odd for two reasons. One reason being that the long ear and long hair weren’t quite the same as Zerel’s, and the second was that another hand was already pced there, flinching at Dawn’s touch. Consciousness started to flow as she reached another hand down, feeling a furred ear twitch as she pced it upon the other’s head.

  Oh.

  Opening her eyes and looking down, Dawn found that she had somehow wrapped herself around both Dalia and Sheryl, whose heads were resting on her belly. It was an unintentional predicament, but she knew it was because they were warm.

  Promptly uncoiling, Dawn began apologizing profusely. Sheryl seemed unaffected, but she was doting on Dalia who seemed a little shellshocked. The elf eventually accepted Dawn's apologies and said that it was her own issue to resolve. While Dalia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, Dawn silently questioned Sherry with her eyes. Her smile in response was reassuring enough, but she resolved to be careful in simir situations with Dalia in the future.

  If that even happens.

  Finding a pce to wait for the others was easy, and the other two waited in nearby brush while Dawn stayed further out from the road, just in case. She didn't need to be close to see down the path, anyway. Looking in her own way, Dawn found the wagon closer than she expected, which wasn't the only surprise. She debated whether to warn her company beforehand, but decided that seeing it for themselves was better than her word.

  When the cart was a few minutes away, Dawn closed the Eye and slowly slid forward, ready to sneak back on board, which brought her close enough to hear when Sheryl quietly wondered at the sight.

  “Is Zerel sitting in Hilda's p?”