“Maybe a few years?” I put my phone away.
He sighed. “You may have morphopathy. It’s a rare condition, where nymphs can’t control their forms.” When I shifted to look at him, his face was contorted. He didn’t seem convinced. “But if that were the case, you’d be changing a lot more than you are. It’s, very strange.”
Said the vampire-bat-shifter man. Yeah, strange.
I shrugged. “Should I see a doctor? Is this condition dangerous?” Was I going to lose all cohesion and become a puddle of goo? I may have watched a few too many Star Trek reruns.
“No, not dangerous. As for a doctor, perhaps. You’ll need to see one to get the contraceptive binding anyway. But maybe you’re just out of practice as a nymph and you need to learn to control it.” His turn to shrug.
If he didn’t know, I had no clue.
Okay, so… seeing a doctor was high on my list of things to do.
“Anything else about nymphs I should know? You mentioned water?”
He nodded. “You should have some control over water, maybe mist?”
My superpower…
I laughed
“What?” Myel asked with a kind smile.
“I’ve always been able to pour a drink perfectly, exactly an ounce of liquor or six ounces of wine, no spills. It’s what made me a great bartender. I’d thought of it as my superpower… apparently it actually is!”
Huh.
“There will probably be more you can do,” Myel said with care. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again. Perhaps he could tell I’d reached the limit of information I could handle.
As much as I needed to know everything about this world — and myself — as soon as possible, there was only so much I could take at a time.
“Thank you, Myel,” I said, sincerely.
“Any time… well actually, no… whenever I’m free and we can be together in secret… I’ll help you how ever I can. I have to. The bond demands it.”
As much as it was an imperative, I still appreciated it.
And as we gazed at each other, I saw something deeper than just our forced relationship in his dark, soulful eyes.
Something I wasn’t sure I could reciprocate.
“Myel… I…” How did I tell him that sex was one thing, but that I didn’t know of I could give him my heart. I wassonot ready for that.
“I know,” he whispered. “It’s okay.” He smiled. “My lifetill now has been… rough.” I had a feeling that was a drastic understatement. “But being with you was…isheavenly, like a dream, the best dream I could ever think to have.”
As compliments went, that one was up there. Definitely top ten, probably top five, I’d ever received.
“Thank you, Myel.” It was all I could say for now. Because meeting up for sex in secret was one thing, but… what did I know of a committed relationship?
I avoided them like the plague.
If I didn’t get close to a person, they couldn’t hurt me. A lesson I’d learned early on in life, which had been reinforced time and again in the foster system.
I didn’t have girl friends and men were useful for sex, but didn’t get any part of my heart.
Most men are pigs, they only want one thing from you, to get in your hoohah. Once they have that, they won’t care about the rest of you.That had been the advice given to me by my second foster mother, Beatrice Moonie. She’d been seventy-four and I’d been nine and she’d been trying to impart her wisdom before she passed, which she had a year later.
The other half of her advice had been,the few men who aren’t pigs… well, they’ll just break your heart.Only much later did I realize there must have been a long story behind that advice.
