My Empire

Chapter 10: A Very Un-Neurotypical Battle

                                          ~~~Ruler Leah of Acelet~~~

Pink petals drifted down from the cherry blossom tree above me, gently covering me and the codling next to me in piles of pink flowers.

I snickered, watching Codfather Azalea of the Codlands try and fail to avoid a falling flower, instead accidentally inhaling it through their gills, making her choke and cough. They gave me an offended side eye as I continued to laugh instead of helping.

"You-" Az hacked, bits of petal falling out of their mouth as they tried to root out the bits that had made it into their throat- "are so mean," she complained.

Laughing more, I reached over and gently picked out the stem of the blossom off of them, letting them handle the shredded flower. "They're harmless if you just sit still and don't inhale them-"

Az sniffed. "I bet you did that on purpose." Their mock glare melted as I gave her a light shove on her shoulder, giggles escaping them too as their face scrunched up with the effort not to smile.

"What, I told the flower to specifically fall so that if you moved in one specific direction, it would go into your gills?" I replied, dramatically placing a hand on my chest and flopping into her lap. "Oh no, you've revealed my evil plan! I'm ruinedddd, all the other villains will make fun of me nowwww–"

They rolled their eyes at me, her smile peeking out even as they tried to stifle it. "Stop, you're making me laugh," she complained, poking me. I blinked up at them, widening my eyes innocently.

This is supposed to be an alliance meeting, not a date, my daemon complained in my mind, sitting a few feet away from me and the ruler of the Codlands and giving us a disgruntled look. Quit being all lovey-dovey already-

Karl was my daemon, a spirit every woodland faerie was born with that took the form of an animal and accompanied us throughout our lives. Our daemons could speak to us telepathically, and were completely sentient and intelligent, sometimes even smarter than their faeries themselves.

"It's not 'lovey dovey', Karl, we're just playing around, chill," I told Karl, sitting up, cherry blossoms falling off of me onto the soft grass we were sitting on.

"Is Karl being a killjoy again?" Az teased, knowing the cat shaped daemon could understand them. He frowned (as much as a cat could frown, anyways) and stood up, hopping into one of the lower branches of the tree to hang over my head.

His voice appeared in my mind a moment later, miffed tone evident in his mindvoice. There is a demon terrorizing the continent, we do not have time to laze about.

My smile faded at the reminder. Az, seeing my sudden mood drop, scooted closer and pulled me into a hug, giving Karl a disappointed look.

"Thanks," I told Azalea, pulling back after another few moments. "Karl is right, though, we do need to talk about defenses and the demon and things."

Azalea frowned, confused. "What is there to talk about? We've already got all the guards on max alert, traps are set everywhere, civilians have their evacuation plans- is there anything else we can do?"

We both thought for a moment. Even Karl was silent, tail swishing as he considered the question.

"What if we dropped the tariffs?" I said, the slightly insane idea suddenly occurring to me. "Like, normally that'd be dumb, because domestic imports would suffer, but right now, the priority is making sure everyone is safe. If people can more easily afford emergency supplies, they'd be safer, even if a few businesses would lose a bit of money to inter-empire businesses."