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Time Together, Time Apart

Part two of seven

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Adagiodajiang

_ _

Alyssa sighed, opening the door to the room at the inn. Walking back hadn't been very good at all, no good, no... It had been a while since she had been treated like that, so long ago that she had almost forgotten about that. Back in their town, the citizens had gotten used to Alyssa and treated her as one of their own, more or less, in the end, considering that she was doing work for them and business with them. She proved herself and they seemed to be more amenable to taurs there too, which had helped her come into herself more.

And then in the Resort City there were too many there that didn't know her and didn't care to know her. She'd shouted for Sandor again and again, looking down alleyways and going into taverns and bars, looking for somewhere that he might have gone. She couldn't imagine why he would be in the other taverns and eateries, even those that simply sold alcohol to those looking to have a good time, but she had to try.

Yet when she had called and called, others had scowled at her, giving her a wide berth, no one answering her at all when she asked if anyone had seen a white fox.

"A white fox?" A horse anthro scoffed with a barely concealed nicker of derision. "Whoever has heard of that, there aren't white foxes from the north down here!"

Alyssa thought that the horse was talking complete silliness, because, of course, white foxes from the north could travel there to the Resort City too! But she didn't stop to tell him that, or that Sandor was actually a red fox, by species, with white fur.

So, she had continued, trying to find him, walking and walking and walking, getting herself lost, running from a pickpocket who had, rather badly, snatched at her, even dodging a sudden dance in the street. She might have stopped to watch the dancers if she had had Sandor there with her, backing up against the wall of a shop to give them space, but she wasn't impressed by the colourful display, the dancers clad in skirts of feathers and other bright adornments.

They just reminded her even more right then, in that moment, that she was alone, completely alone.

In the end, she thought that she could head back to the inn. Maybe Sandor was there and, when he could not find her, had headed back to their inn to wait for him? It was the best hope she had, though her body felt like a stone weight, worse than the luggage she had hauled from the ship, just dragging herself up the stairs. Going up stairs was easier for her than going down them, but she could barely lift her cloven hooves over each stair as she stepped up, dragging her feet.

"Oof..."

She was so powerless after exhausting herself, though it was mental and emotional exhaustion as well as physical.

However, when she opened the door, only an empty space greeted her.

"Sandor?"

She turned on the light, electricity flowing. They did not use magical spells and enchantments to keep lanterns burning, storing magical energy, for their electricity did work similarly, even if it was a little more basic and rudimentary than how Alyssa found their magical tools to be. Of course, she had had her tools and household items enchanted by Sandor, imbued with his magic and, for longevity, a little of his mana too. He had truly been instrumental in the progression of magic and training...

Alyssa rubbed her arm, looking forlornly around the dark room, turning the light on, though it was a bit dim for her liking.

She missed Sandor. He would have cast a ball of light, mild fire, to make sure every corner of the room was illuminated. She always like to make sure everything was right in a room and that room at the inn was unfamiliar to her, from the bed to the wardrobe and the dresser at the base of it. There was a chest that she had not used yet, but she didn't think the blankets within would be of any use to her. Otherwise, the room was simple with a window and a small, round table set up beside it. On closer inspection, there was also a chair tucked into the corner, but just the one. With her and Sandor in the room, just one chair didn't seem like quite enough, but neither the doe-taur nor the fox had anticipated spending all that much time in the room.

The door closed behind her and Alyssa sighed, trying to fight back the tiny tears of tiredness pricking in the corners of her eyes. She was alone and she couldn't do anything about it. She folded her legs to the ground, settling down, leaning against the bed for at least a little bit of support. Should she wait there, all over again, for the fox to return to her?

"It just feels like history repeating itself..."

She didn't like the bitterness in her tone. It did not match up to the warmth that she felt when she was with Sandor, for Sandor. It pulled around her, sinking into her body, tickling down to her fingertips and her cloven hooves, remembering how it felt when he held her, how he had looked out for her, stood up for her, showed her a new way of living and made a home for her. There were so many things that he had done for her and so many good things about him... She didn't want this one thing, the disappearing and not speaking to her, to be the defining feature of their relationship.

It couldn't be.

And then...the sound of hooves, that trademark rap-rap rap-rap came to her, someone walking across the floor of the bedroom at the inn as if they had always been there.

"Eep!"

Not even Alyssa could stop the shocked squeak from breaking her lips, scrambling back and away, though the doe-taur did not quite get to her hooves again. For there was another deer-taur right there in the room with her! And however she had gotten there was another question entirely, for Alyssa was so very sure that the door had locked behind her too. She had only been fortunate that she had been the one with the keys and not Sandor, for at least she had been able to get back into the room.

In the blink of an eye, she took in the stranger standing over her, seeming to loom, though the doe-taur could not have been all that much bigger than her, if she had been standing. Yet the brown of her coat seemed to be shinier and more lustrous than Alyssa's, her tail even larger and thicker, fluffier with a thicker, white tuft to the underside, though she held it moderately. Her hair was long and thick, spilling far past her shoulders, and was even wavier than Alyssa's naturally was, though she had taken to wearing it up to be able to better go about her work while Sandor was away.

The strange doe-taur, however, had brighter, rosier cheeks than Alyssa and even a flower accessory that seemed to be pinned into her hair. The petals gleamed faintly in the low light, as if the light was tracking down over the petals, pink lines on them. Even the stamen looked real, springing up from the centre with a light bob and flirt to it.

Yet Alyssa could not get over the fact, quite fairly so, that there was a stranger in her room! Someone who very much should not have been there!

"Who are you?" She gasped, pressing a hand over her heart, the clothing of her tunic soft and thin over her chest. "How are you in my room? I thought... The door?"

The ancient being, even though Alyssa did not know her as that, looked down at her with a thin, tight-lipped smile.

"Hello, Alyssa."

"How do you know my name?" Alyssa asked, though it didn't feel like the kind of question that she was going to get an answer to, her heart sinking, not yet understanding why. "It's... You should not be here, this room was assigned to Sandor and me."

"It is only Sandor's name that is on the booking," the other doe-taur said smoothly. "You may call me Guinevere. It is just one of my many, many names."

Guinevere? She had never heard of a name like that before, so much grander than hers, which was nothing more than a simple, common name, the kind of name that common folk took on for themselves. Alyssa gulped, struggling not to look down. Even the other doe-taur's fur was smoother and glossier, richer, everything about her speaking of someone better than her.

She's so much prettier than me.

_ _

It was not a thought that Alyssa wanted in her head, but, well...an intrusive thought did not push its way in because it was wanted. Her self-doubts swirled, clawing at her stomach, even bidding a tiny rise of nausea to pull at her belly.

"Who do you even think you are?"

Alyssa baulked. Why was the doe-taur speaking to her like that? Sure, she was beautiful - but she was in Alyssa's room! She couldn't talk to her like that, she wasn't even supposed to be there!

"I... Um... You don't have to speak to me like that."

But, to her shock, the deer-taur sneered down at her with contempt for her that the doe-taur, Guinevere, did not even try to disguise.

"Hah... That's amusing, truly, that you think you can stand up for yourself. Just who do you think you are?" Guinevere laughed at her, her voice hollow and dull and mocking, as if Alyssa was not even worth a real laugh from her and her lungs. "You're just here, on the floor in the little room that your partner paid for - not a coin from you, of course. You're always taking his coin, his gemstones, everything that he's earned. When are you going to get up and earn for yourself?"

Alyssa fumbled, her lower jaw falling slightly slack. What was she talking about? She had done well enough for herself when Sandor had been away, hadn't she? Or maybe she hadn't... Doubt curled, worrying and gnawing at her belly. Maybe she had been using more of Sandor's money and stores than she had realised?

"I... I didn't mean to," she said, struggling to find the words, though she really should not have been the one defending herself in such a situation. "I was just trying to do my best, for Sandor and me... Sandor said he wanted to pay for this holiday so that he could make up a little for going away without telling me!"

The doe-taur laughed, throwing her head back. Somehow, that was what chilled Alyssa to the bone more than anything else.

She had heard laughs like that before, long, long ago. They had come from truly evil beings that walked among normal citizens as if they were nothing more than a neighbour, but they were the ones that someone like Alyssa truly had to watch. For they would laugh while they whipped a taur or abused a worker and no one would ever truly know the depths of the darkness that they went to behind closed doors.

And she was afraid, for a moment, of what Guinevere was capable of too.

"Oh, that's a jest!" Guinevere mocked, shaking her head in fake sadness for Alyssa. "You're nothing more than a beggar picking up his scraps and causing him problems... He wouldn't have even had to come back if not for you, it's you that can't take care of yourself. He doesn't want you, he just pities you."

Alyssa sucked in a breath, the arrow of the doe-taur's words striking home, right in her heart. That shouldn't have hurt as much as it did, coming from a stranger, and yet the deer-taur's words seemed to pull and pinch at every last one of Alyssa's darkest insecurities and everything that had gone through her mind on dark, lonely, stormy nights.

For the ancient being saw far, far more than any normal anthro or person, to be fair, even if Alyssa did not know that. She did not know that the doe-taur had lived for thousands of years and longer still, that she had healed and that she had broken, that her way of life, over time, had changed. She could never have known that she had met with Sandor already, not with her heart aching as much as it was already, lungs burning.

Her eyes were wet. Why were her eyes wet?

"Look at you... So old." The doe-taur was not done yet, not as Guinevere scoffed down at her, derision darkening her amber gaze. "Who would be interested in such an aged doe-taur like you? A handsome white fox with power and influence and magic? Don't make me laugh."

Alyssa shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Please... No. Stop..."

"Oh, my dear, I'm only just getting started!" Guinevere smirked. "Your dull fur... No one would ever want to touch that, ugh. It's so... Did you bathe with the peasants? But that is so like one of the lower classes, is it not? Your hair is limp and lank, just the mark of someone who doesn't know how to care for it. If you were better than you are, you would know what oils to comb through your hair to keep those lank locks in moderate condition."

Alyssa trembled, heart pounding, blood roaring in her ears. Yet it was not enough to dull Guinevere's words from striking shattering shards into her heart still.

"You're not good enough for him, not in any land, not in any country," Guinevere told her, as if she was merely imparting facts to Alyssa. "You'd do better to disappear now, to run away forever. He'll be better off without you, he doesn't need you. Just think of how much better darling Sandor would be doing if you had never come into his life. He would still have a family, he would have more powerful connections... And he would never have had to work his way up from the bottom, because of separating from his family... All because of you poor, weak you, Alyssa. Do you really think you are worth all of that?"

"Stop it!"

Alyssa shrieked, though it was more of a shout, her lack of breath ripping the words from her lips, though she had not meant to send them forth. No, no, no - it was all wrong, all wrong! The doe-taur couldn't talk to her like that! She acted like she was so much above her and yet she was still one of her kind!

But Alyssa couldn't breathe, tears clouding her vision, spilling over in fat droplets, her chest heaving, even though she didn't feel as if she was getting anything at all near a full breath into her lungs. She couldn't breathe, couldn't be, huffing and panting, leaning over and clutching at her chest. Cold sweat dampened the back of her neck, tiny, soft hairs clinging to the nape of it, though it was not a sensation that the distraught doe-taur even noticed.

"What... No... Stop... No... Stop..."

She could only repeat that, over and over again, though it was not any kind of mantra that would save her, not where she was, not with how her chest tightened and tightened. The doe was mean! That much was sure and yet her words had struck a horrendous cord of truth within Alyssa, right down deep where the seeds of her self-doubt had taken root all that time ago.

Maybe they had always been there, never planted but always growing, vines twisting and curling into every last corner of her psyche. Maybe she had always thought that was and the stranger bringing things to light was just there, in her own way, doing Alyssa the kind of favour that had never needed to be dredged up to the surface.

Guinevere looked down at the breaking, crumbling, doe-taur with a smirk on her lips. Oh, how easy it was to make them fall...

Alyssa groaned, rocking back and forth, legs shaking, though she didn't manage to get herself back to her hooves. Her legs trembled too much for that, skittering and scraping over the wooden floor as if they were never enough to support her weight.

"Look at you, how pathetic you are," Guinevere mocked. "So small, so plain, so boring. It's no wonder that everyone's eyes slide past you on the street and Sandor will soon see you in the same way as everyone else does, as something of complete and utter insignificance. It's a wonder really that he's paid this much attention to you for this long already. But that's because he is a sweet, warm, kind soul...unlike you."

Alyssa couldn't listen to it anymore. The deer-taur was there in her room at the inn and dumping all that on her? She still ached deeply from being abandoned by Sandor, though she still wished so very much that she knew why he had done it, why he had left her yet again, wanting to believe so very much so that he had a good reason for doing what he had done.

She staggered up, groaning and flinging her forelegs out before her, getting up. It didn't matter if she was ungainly - the deer-taur confirmed that for her with a shattering laugh that dug further shards into Alyssa's fragile heart. But she had to leave, had to do something, had to get out.

Out, out, out.

It was the only thing that she felt she had left in her control as she fled, sobs wrenching themselves from her lungs and her lips, tears streaming from her eyes. They blew away in the breeze where they did not roll quickly down her face, hurtling too quickly down the stairs and half-falling down the last few.

Out, out, out.

It was all she could do. Especially when Guinevere, if that was even her name, seemed to know so much more about Alyssa and her life than even the doe-taur in question did.

Whipping around the corner and out of the inn, the door swinging behind her, Alyssa did not even hear the receptionist calling after her.

She didn't care.

Continued in part three...