Hopelessly Devoted ~ Garroth x F!Reader

Ch. 3: Juicy Scoop

The sun lowered in the sky outside your window, which you hadn't curtained shut for once. You studied the guard through it as he left—his posture remained alert even when no one was around.

You slid the curtains closed, hulling yourself back up. Under any other circumstances, you may have been more than ecstatic to reunite with solitude—but somehow the air quality of your empty room stiffened. It was difficult to come to terms with, but perhaps loneliness could become suffocating.

***

No sooner than you'd left the window to sit down, something light-weight jammed against your front door, colliding with a metal bar you'd jammed into the letter slot to block it. Instead of giving up, a crumpled letter came gliding through the slice of a gap at the bottom of your door.

You sighed and ripped open the envelope, reading that you had been invited to hang out with "Lord Aphmau and the gang." An amused chuckle escaped your lips. The tone was no where near professional; in fact, she requested you casually "hang" with them. Not once in all of your many villages had you been personally invited to "chat over a cup of tea" with an official title. You found it only fitting that it would happen in the large purple house.

This new Lord is . . . more persistent than others.

***

The next afternoon, you got ready and left the house. Maybe going outside would prove to your village Lord that you really weren't cut out for these types of things.

So, you swallowed, here it was. The Lord's house on the hilltop. It was hard to bring yourself up the stairs and towards the front door, but you did it. That is, after a considerably hefty amount of mental debate.

It wasn't that you were antisocial; in fact, that wasn't the case at all. You just had a tendency to . . . Your thoughts cut off when the door propped open and a young woman emerged.

She couldn't have been any older than fifteen, you assumed. And it wasn't just because of her small height, (though she was extremely short). It was her round face and bright hazel eyes that gave off a childish radiance.

"Oh, hi!" she beamed, with a living-in-the-moment air. "You must be ____." She extended her right hand to you.

You took it and shook firmly. It was surprisingly soft. "Nice to meet you."

She released your hand from her fluffy grip and smiled. "I'm Aphmau."

You blinked back. "Lord Aphmau?"

"Yep!" She stepped aside to let you through the door. "You seem surprised."

"No. . . Well, yeah, a little," you admitted.

"A lot of people expect me to be older." She leaned towards you, her hand covering one side of her face. "Frankly though," her voice lowered, "I don't see the appeal in old, bearded men making decisions that they won't live to see the results of." She giggled. "Anyway, come sit down. You're just in time." Lord Aphmau gestured towards a long brown table on the back wall at the end of her kitchen.

There was definitely a gang there: three girls, seemingly your age, gathered around the table, laughing. They fell into attentive silence when you took your place next to an orange-haired . . . witch. She wore dark dominatrix apparel, and her pointed black hat gave you every right to be wary of her, but she was so charming that you couldn't help but give her a small wave.