UnFamiliar

Chapter 13

"Ouch," said Val, after a few seconds of silence.

I giggled. Look I'm not necessarily proud of the fact. But something about Val describing what was probably the most excruciating experience of my life as simply 'ouch' was funny.

Val groaned over my giggles. "Hang on a moment." He patted my head. Then leaving me to the uncontrollable giggles, I somehow knew if I stopped laughing I'd start sobbing, Val rolled himself off his bed. I was impressed that he could stand, let alone walk after that. He went over to the door and a lock thudded into place, upon his return to the bed, he untied the curtains, creating sort of a small room out of his bed. When he was done, he came and laid down next to me.

He didn't touch me though, and it was sort of painfully obvious. When sharing the bed at night, our feet or legs or something bump into each other. I'd gotten sort of comfortable in the casual way we touched each other, so the fact that he was clearly not touching me on purpose gave me a sort of sick feeling in my stomach.

"You okay?" I asked, which was dumb. Neither of us were okay.

"Sorry," he whispered, "got caught up in thought. We can talk here, but we should be quiet. The furniture in here is mostly loyal to me over my father, but if asked directly, they must obey any of his commands."

"The furniture?" I asked.

"Yes. I've noticed your furniture doesn't seem to be sentient. Maybe it's a demon thing?"

I wanted to know more about this apparently tattle-tale furniture, but ultimately it didn't matter much, did it? Instead, I asked, "So I'm your boyfriend?"
Val was quiet for so long I thought maybe he'd fallen asleep. Despite his quiet tone, I jumped when he finally did speak. "I decided it would be better to look stupid rather than weak."

"What do you mean?"
"Weakness gets you killed here. I decided it be better if I told my father our bond was willing, and well...us dating was the only reason I could come up with on the spot."

I pondered that. "Do you mean to tell me your father would kill you?" I didn't have much experience with fathers, but I was fairly certain that made the demon king a bad one.

Val grabbed my arm, and squeezed gently before releasing it. "Yes."

Neither of us said anything after that, and the next thing I knew I was waking up to a snake creature yanking open the bed's curtains. I screamed and scrambled away, which put me pretty much in Val's lap. The creature's arms and legs were made of snake tails and it's head was that of a giant serpent. Its entire body was covered in scales with its belly in a lighter color just like, well, a snake.

Val's arms wrapped around my waist, and held me to him as he said, "I suppose we're late for dinner?"

The snake creature bobbed its head. "Yes, Prince Valfar. The King isn't pleased."

"We'll get changed quickly then. Please wait for us out in the hall," Val said. The second the creature was out of the room, Val dumped me unceremoniously out of his lap and went to the closet, cursing all the while. "There will be hell to pay for this. Change into the clothes Pamon gave you."

I looked around, not really sure where the clothes had gotten to. I found them at the foot of the bed. I'd expected something close to what Val was wearing when I'd summoned him, but to my relief there was definitely a shirt involved. The pants seemed to work more or less like normal pants with a drawstring tie in place of a belt. The shirt was more like a jacket, buttoning on one side of my chest with decorative buttons mirroring the look on the other side. It also had tails that went down to my knees. All that being said, I can't say I was too surprised to discover the shirt didn't have sleeves.