Dancing Fox In XII: Dance If You Want To

[Deathkeeper]

Kiss on the snoot!

"Last night. Cleo explained how to do it in exchange for the advice on foxes. It was...weird. And you don't have to give me all those compliments. You did it three times already after all." he says bashfully, switching to his normal form.
Since after all, Leah has heavily implied that that one is her favorite.

[Recaiden]

"Well, you're worth at least four compliments."
Leah grins as he goes back to his best form. This one is fine to pet too.
"Which one is it that you made?"

Maybe she can just sort of tell, looking at him? But it's not obvious yet.

It makes one think though. Maybe there is a conspiracy. Not about foxes...

[Deathkeeper]

What could it be if not about foxes?!

"I'm...not really sure? It's helped me enhance my Aspect powers, so it's probably a Mask?" he suggests.

[Recaiden]

Maybe...about giraffes.

"You...look a bit different too. Is that on purpose?"
Leah is quite thoroughly cheered. A mask is the best thing for him to have gotten.

[Deathkeeper]

Silly Leah. Cleo can't be a giraffe. She has all of her Charities as before. You can't fake those.

"Well, we also met my 'father' who gave me a Supe'd up knife. Maybe it did something?" he says, drawing and examining the Royal Dirk.

[Recaiden]

Well, her dragon shape does have quite a long neck.

"Not actually your father, I guess?"
Leah's eyes flick over the knife.
"Looks pretty neat itself."

[Deathkeeper]

"My father is not a talking pompous faerie fox who hangs out at deer parties and hands out magic daggers." says Mist, running a finger along the flat of the blade. At least it's a very nice magic dagger.

[Recaiden]

"So who is a talking pompous faerie fox who hangs out at deer parties and hands out magic daggers?"

Leah carefully holds a hand out near to the dirk, asking permission to see it.

"And what's a deer party?"

[Deathkeeper]

Leah may examine the Dirk. It is something like a Blade, but not. It obeys different rules.
"The faerie fox King who claims to be my father is all of that, of course. And a deer party is a party organized by deer. A stag in this case. I suppose he would consider himself my uncle or something." Misr explains with a shrug.

[Recaiden]

Leah smiles at the knife, admiring the sharpness of it. What is this odd thing made of?
"But you couldn't call it a stag party. Maybe you should take them, you know? One doesn't get a lot of offers of family."

Just a thought.

[Deathkeeper]

As described in the dream, there is no iron in it. Brass and gold on the hilt with a bronze blade.
"What do you mean, take them? They're already sure I'm one of them; nothing I do will change that."

[Recaiden]

Of course, what she's really curious about is what the magic does.

"But you don't think you're one of them. Maybe it would be good to accept them?"

[Deathkeeper]

The dirk acts as a focus for Mist's existing powers, and allows him to summon the rest of the King's blades From his magic coat (sold separately).

"The owl is pretty nice, actually. And the Duke is pretty honest at least. But the King is a pompous jerk who treats me like a little kid.

Though, I guess you don't have a wonderful relationship with your dad and you still call him that, huh?" he admits.

The Duke would be happy to learn that he is the cool uncle.

[Recaiden]

Why does a fox need so many sharp things? Even one that's a king?

"So just ignore the King as much as you can and deal with the other two."

Leah nods, at first slowly, and then quickly, surely.
"Well, she is. You don't have to have a good relationship to at least have the relationship. She's a terrible father, but she tries. We can help each other out once in a while."
What's family for if not helping you hide from the police, stealing souls for you, and getting information from your boyfriend that would take awkward questions otherwise?

"I rejected her for a long time, right? But what I'm trying to say is it's easy to cut someone away from your family, and hard to get them back in, so give plenty of chances."

Which kind of uncle is the Owl, then?

[Deathkeeper]

Do you have any idea how hard it is to stab a king when he owns every blade in a five mile radius? It's very hard.
And what spying on Mist has Cleo done for Leah?
"I guess you're right. It's unlikely I'll see my birth family again. Maybe I should take what I can get." he says with a sigh.

And the Knight-Lord is the uncle you never talk to and therefore only fosters mildly friendly ambivalence.

[Recaiden]

"Aww, I'm sorry, Mist. I didn't mean it to be like that."

Leah holds out a hand to him.

"We can look, and try to find them again. I'd help however I can. And even if you really think it's hopeless, you have me too, right?"

[Deathkeeper]

Mist leans up against her, taking the hand.
"It's okay, I wouldn't want to see them here.
Not sure they could take the craziness. I'm happy to have you as my Nexus family."

[Recaiden]

"And maybe you don't need them, but don't let the one jerk spoil the whole bunch."
Leah leans into him as well.
"Thanks Mist. My wonderful, handsome fox."

Leah's now determined that, unlike his earth family, she'll be able to handle however weird the Nexus gets.
"I can stay here tonight? With you?"
Definitely all about Mist, and not a flimsy excuse to avoid something back at the fortress.

[Deathkeeper]

"Sure. I don't have a big bed for you, but if I get smaller we can both fit on mine maybe. Or we can raid the spare pillow stash and work something out." he says, more than happy to let her ignore her fortress duties regardless of whether or not there actually are any.

[Recaiden]

"Pillows should be fine, so you don't have to change."
The responsibilities at the fortress that need her in person are remarkably few.

[Deathkeeper]

"Well, shall we go, then?" he asks, waving a hand towards the stairs.
If there's anything she has to do, Message can handle it for one night. What are goddess full-selves for?

[Recaiden]

That's the thing. Message already handles a lot of the work. All the stuff Leah used to do when she was a ghost. Alkanai can handle any physical emergencies. Probably. Being several people really makes the work lighter. One to do the ghost stuff, one to do the watching and talking, one to fill in everywhere else.

Leah grins and bounds off towards and up the stairs, stopping at the top or the landing to look back at Mist.

[Deathkeeper]

How very cattish of her.

Mist smiles and follows her up the stairs. Once they get to his room, sleepy time things will most likely happen, unless she has a topic she's like to broach with him...

[Recaiden]

A topic? As if there isn't always. But leaving aside the topics of Naku, the inn, the empire, books, other dimensions, his earth family, Leah's robot daughter, finding work for people who need it, travel times, music, and a host of other things, two come to mind.

"Are you planning to do more with the Charities? Don't feel like you must; Ollver's had just the one for years now, and probably won't change that for decades at the least."

"And you can't be thinking of going right to sleep, can you? Mist, if I'd just needed a place to stay away from Skullfort, I'd have gone to the Keep. I'd like more of you than that."

[Deathkeeper]

"Well, I thought I'd make the bed at least first. And I haven't been planning on anything much. Been sorta winging it.
What do you want exactly?" he asks.
Robot? That must be the nanobot person Message mentioned.

[Recaiden]

Leah nods, and goes to help make the bed and arrange the spare pillows.
"Fair enough. Seems to be taking you fine places anyway."

But for the later, she has to give Mist a dry, if amused look. Really?
"So businesslike of you. It isn't like that."
She stops and looks down, abashed.

It is the same nanobot person Message mentioned!

[Deathkeeper]

"Oh, well, what did you want to do? I could show you some more knife tricks. The inn has an oddly well stocked board game closet. Any ideas?" he asks brightly.

[Recaiden]

"What is a board game? If you stock it in a closet it sounds like itd be a food.
Original plans detailed by curiosity.

[Deathkeeper]

"It's a game that uses a board, though there are some exceptions." he says, getting up and leading her to that special closet, full of Battleship and Yahtzee and Sorry! and anything else you might think of, including a few tabletop games.
Those are Mist's.

[Recaiden]

Leah looks through the brightly colored boxes, well confused by them, and probably picks up something large and unfun, like Monopoly. Then she's drawn to the tabletop games, because they are books!

"I don't know, what can you recommend?" she idly asks, paging through a sourcebook. Oh, here's one of those 'what is a roleplaying game' sidebars. That should help.