Fifteen: A Bath and a Big Sleep

“Gurgle, gurgle.” With half her face sunk beneath steam, the Little White Dragon pinched the softness on her chest. She didn’t squeeze hard; the sting still made her hiss. She slid her hands back to her waist, retreating from the two little devils perched on her ribs.

Crisis loomed like a storm wall. The Little White Dragon was facing the biggest one of her life.

Lilith had made peace with this body once. A small girl’s frame, short arms and legs—time had worn her down like waves smoothing stones. She adapted, then accepted.

But her body had started budding again, like spring pushing through frost. She could barely stand it.

She could accept being a girl outside; inside, there was still steel, a man at heart. Sometimes, though, flesh tugged her into tiny, strange acts, like wind teasing a bell.

Now her body felt like a traitor, turning mature, like a river changing course. Worry pooled cold in her gut.

A word she used to laugh at surfaced like a fish breaking water—feminization spiral.

She drew a deep breath, steam curling in her lungs, and apologized in silence to every protagonist from those certain sites she’d binged. She’d been foolish, watching them be horny and blissed-out like cats in sunbeams. She never thought she’d stand in their shadow.

Lilith never called herself iron-willed. The one thing she stuck with was this: she beat a Demon King, then swallowed the Taint, like choking down bitter medicine. The pain gnawed for days, but the Little White Dragon’s tolerance for pain held like a rope in a gale.

Her resistance to pleasure, though, was paper in rain—zero. If this body turned into a grown woman, then those two dreaded words were only a matter of time.

“What a mess,” she muttered, a sour cloud over a hot spring. She pinched her slick, tender thigh and smeared more foam over skin that shone like glazed jade.

Forget it. The die was cast; first, the bath.

When Lilith stepped out, Litt was already asleep. The little shard sprawled in the dead center of the narrow single bed, a starfish on wet sand, leaving Lilith not even a sliver.

Nidhogg sat on the other bed, two pillows propping her back, reading the same book she’d had on the mag-car. She lowered it when Lilith appeared, voice soft as lamplight. “Why’d you take so long? It’s almost midnight.”

“It’s almost midnight and you’re not sleeping?” Lilith sat on her bed’s edge. She unwound the towel from her hair and pulled a fused Fire-and-Wind industrial magic crystal from the nightstand. Northern Ursus invented these—basically a hair dryer, quiet as snowfall. The Little White Dragon could use it without waking Litt, which soothed her like tea before bed.

“I still need a bath. I can’t just flop into bed,” Nidhogg said, a cat’s tail of complaint flicking. “You hogged the bathroom. How am I supposed to wash and sleep?”

“Not my problem. I always take this long,” Lilith said, airy as steam. “If you’ve got the guts, barge in next time and wash with me.” She focused on her white waterfall of hair, never mind her mouth running loose. “Share my tub, and I’ll soak as long as you say.”

“You said it,” Nidhogg brightened, book forgotten like a leaf in wind. She sat up, eyes locked on Lilith. “I’ve wanted to bathe with you for ages.”

“Pervert, are you?” Lilith laughed and scolded. Heat climbed her cheeks like dawn on snow, but her head stayed clear, blood not yet boiling. She could still banter through the blush. “Back in the Kingdom, they’d arrest you for that.”

“Please. I don’t go for little things who haven’t hit the Feather-Dragon phase—oh, I guess you have now,” Nidhogg sniffed, a tiny puff of smoke. “I’ve just got the itch every girl has—to scrub and dress up something cute. Hardly a crime.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lilith finished drying her hair. The Little White Dragon tossed the crystal into Nidhogg’s arms, then bonelessly fell back onto the mattress, a leaf settling on a pond. She yanked the quilt up and tucked both herself and Litt under its warm cloud. “Night. Go shower.”

Nidhogg didn’t answer. Footsteps padded to the bathroom; the door clicked shut, a pebble in a stream. Lilith still caught it.

The Little White Dragon chuckled. She hid her warmed face under the quilt and scolded the treacherous mouth that let ghosts slip out.

“Serves you right, running wild,” she puffed, tapping her lips like knocking on a tiny drum. “If she really barges in, what then?”

Annoyed at herself, she kneaded her babbling mouth, gave it a few gentle pats. Then a yawn bloomed like dusk.

She hadn’t slept on the train, and Lamter had kept her running all day. Now her eyelids dueled like clashing shutters; staying awake was like holding sand.

Sleepy, the Little White Dragon curled into the quilt, eyes feathering shut. Her last drifting thought bobbed up like a cork—

Did she leave all her clothes in the basket?

That final wisp of awareness snapped like a thread. The Little White Dragon closed her eyes and, hugging the girl in her arms, sank into dreams.

In the dream, Lilith returned to the soft, cotton-candy world she’d found in Morris. Only this time, she wasn’t the not-quite-grown little sprout. She stood taller; her waist slimmed like a willow; her legs stretched long as river reeds. The pair on her chest seemed fuller than Nidhogg’s, perched above a waist you could span with one hand, tempting as fruit in shade.

She lay in a huge tub spun from blue-violet cotton candy. Hot milk, a shade deeper than her hair, wrapped her like a silken cocoon. It felt like falling into a warm embrace; comfort tugged her eyes closed even in sleep.

Suddenly, the dream turned like wind.

The cotton candy and milk bath vanished. In their place stood a cold wooden tub and clear warm water. It was the very bathroom she’d left moments ago.

Lilith tried to rise, to look around, but her limbs ignored her like reeds in a frozen pond. She could feel them, and her tender skin reported every ripple. But she couldn’t make her body move.

Panic pricked like needles, and she tried to pull free of the dream. Just then, the bathroom door opened like a page turning.

Lilith stared, heart fluttering like a trapped bird. A familiar figure stood in the doorway.

Nidhogg.

“Y-you, why are you there?” the Little White Dragon blurted. Her voice poured out syrup-sweet, unbelievable—if not for the real thrum of her own cords, she wouldn’t believe it was hers.

Nidhogg didn’t answer. She stepped forward in silence, like night covering snow, and captured Lilith’s soft lips.

Lilith froze, then slowly blurred into the dream’s haze, like ink blooming in water.

Heavens. How was she having a dream like this.