I put on some pants while Lyris retrieved something from her room, and then I followed her with vague dread as she led us to Sable’s room and knocked. Sable came to the door wearing just a largely transparent nightgown. “What’s up ladies, need a third tonight?”
I nearly choked, and Sable chuckled, having been fishing for a reaction from me as usual.
Lyris seemed to take her seriously. “Not presently, but we wished to confirm some things about covens.”
Sable looked briefly confused and then flashed me a mischievous grin before waving us inside. I hadn’t seen the inside of her room yet, which turned out to be the master bedroom. Much like the rest of the house, it had a lot of antique furnishings and bookshelves lined with tomes and also a selection of paperback novels. Many things that could either be obscure knick knacks or magical paraphernalia were littered about.
A few plants were hanging from the ceiling, probably carefully positioned to catch the light in the daytime. The floor looked to be a semi-organized disaster area, with piles of clothing that seemed to be distinctly sorted into “dirty” and “clean” piles. A number of cat toys were gathered into a neat pile in one area of the room, likely untouched for some time, and I felt an unexpected nostalgia for the entire scene. Her bed was a mess, but she had a collection of stuffed animals off to one side of it. A black cat, a snake, a canine of some sort, a bat, and a little red demon.
“Okay, enough tourism. If you want to get to know the place better you can start sleeping in the cat bed. What’s this about covens?”
“Yes, I read about them in this biographical record.” Lyris held up a book, though it didn’t seem like it was bound using modern book binding methods. However, the cover had an illustration of a sexy human witch wearing a stereotypical hat and low-cut dress, and the title was written in elven: “My Human Love Coven”. Was that… elven smut?
Sable’s mouth started crawling into a subtle grin as she looked at the book, but she tried to keep a straight face. “Ah yes. The Love Coven. Of course I’ve read it. What do you want to know?” How had she read elven smut? Was she bluffing?
“Well, the human witch in this record has several lovers, and the elf documentarian becomes embroiled in this coven. It seems one of the lovers is dominant over the others, but as the elf does not know the social rules, she is at a disadvantage. Could you tell us the rules?”
I did not like where this was going. How could I explain to Lyris that this was fiction and smut? Sable smiled, and I could sense mischief.
“Oh, of course I know all about it, I’m from a big witch family after all. A coven forms around a particular witch, who is the coven mistress. She has a set of lovers who might be witches, hedge mages, or other magical folk.”
Lyris nodded enthusiastically, clearly believing this. “This matches my records. How are the social roles determined?”
Sable smiled, and clearly made some shit up off the top of her head to troll me. “Well, as you’ve read, the coven mistress determines the coven’s agenda, but the most dominant member makes decisions about membership and who sleeps with who.”
I spoke up, finally. “You’re making that up aren’t you?”
Lyris looked at me questioningly, and Sable grinned and contradicted me. “You’re a brand new witch, you don’t know how witch society works, right?”
That was… a reasonable point, but she was shitting us, right?
Lyris nodded, agreeing with Sable. “This description matches what I have seen in the records. Do not worry, I will select ideal partners for you.”
Sable, standing behind Lyris out of her view, gave me a shit-eating grin. She was enjoying this. Lyris stepped forward and handed me her smut. “You should read this, as it is quite enlightening. Sable, do you have further reference material?”
“Oh hell yes I do, but finish LovCov first.”
It had a cute shortened name like a light novel? Did this shit have a fandom somewhere? I flipped to a random page and read a few lines. It was in Elven, of course.
Mildred placed a tender but firm hand on my bare skin, her grip strong and reassuring, but also offering no room for negotiation. “You are part of this coven now, Galadria, and I expect you to behave like it. The first rule is that you serve our mistress’s desires before all others. The second rule is that you also serve my desires, and when I tell you to, the desires of the other coven members.”
Oh my, what had I gotten myself embroiled in? These humans had such unusual traditions, but if I was to learn about their culture I had to embrace it and document it from within. “Yes, I will serve.”
“Good, pet. Now, you will wear this collar to show your initial position at the bottom of the hierarchy.”
“A collar? Like an animal?”
“Yes, don’t worry, it’s quite comfortable. And if you are lucky, the mistress might like the way you look in it and make you a familiar.”
Oh no! If I was bound as a familiar I might never escape here again. Just as I was putting on the collar, I saw Mildred pulling out a leash.
I pulled my eyes away from this dreck and looked up to Sable, my eyebrows tilted as though to say “Seriously?”
Sable was barely suppressing a laugh.
Lyris had been thinking about something while I’d read. “Sable, do you have a coven?”
Sable apparently hadn’t been prepared for this question. “Uh, what? No, I’m… single I guess.”
“Considering your status as Morgan’s master, should you not be in this coven, too?”
Sable got a far-off look in her eyes, having not prepared for this line of reasoning. She seemed to be trying to quickly evaluate what line of bullshit would sound plausible without giving away the game. “Uhhh, well I guess that makes a certain amount of sense…”
“Very well. Then you will be the mistress of this coven.”
Sable seemed a bit taken aback by this. “Wait, how did you come to that-”
I also had misgivings about this. “Hold on Lyris, I don’t-”
Lyris held up her hands as though to calm us. “Do not worry. Morgan, as your dominant it is my job to make your relationship decisions. Sable, as Morgan’s master it is only natural that you are head of the coven. Correct?”
Sable stared blankly and sputtered, having clearly bullshitted herself into a corner. “Uh, but, HR regulations…”
I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on but if I could turn this back on Sable somehow and make her sort out the consequences of her trolling I was in favor. “No Sable, I think she’s right. The HR packet didn’t say anything about who could and couldn’t be part of a coven. You’re the head of the coven.” It hadn’t said anything about covens of course.
“Uh.. well if you feel that strongly about it there’s a… form?”
“Bring it.”
She opened a laptop and printed out a form on a small printer precariously located on top of some books. She filled out a few fields and handed it to me. It was on Ward Pharmaceuticals letterhead and seemed like a standard corporate form titled “Relationship Disclosure Form”. She had filled in the “nature of relationship” as “Romantic”, ticked her checkboxes acknowledging company policy, and handed it to me awkwardly, a look of doubt on her face. “Are you sure about this?”.
I signed off smugly, happy to have made this her problem. “Yep! Enjoy, ‘coven mistress’.”
Her look of doubt rapidly turned into a smug smile of her own as she filed the form away somewhere. “Oh, I will.”
Oh shit. Did she just bait me into that?
I was so focused on the idea of making Sable have to deal with the consequences of trolling Lyris about smut covens that I hadn’t considered the possibility that she was down for it. But was this more elaborate trolling or was she seriously down for it?
Lyris looked pleased that things had gone as she expected. “Good. Then Morgan, why don’t you sleep with Sable tonight?”
I froze and glared at Sable. She gave me a seductive wink.
With that, Lyris excused herself for the night and left me standing in Sable’s room. I considered going back to my own room but this would be pretty obvious to Lyris, who could track my location. Instead I stood there awkwardly, not sure what Sable’s intention here was.
She sat down on the bed with a small smile on her face and patted the spot next to her, signaling that I should come. Grudgingly I sat next to her.
“Sorry about all that, Morgan. It got a bit out of hand, but I’m not disappointed with the outcome.”
I gave her a tired look. “I’m not even sure I know what the outcome was. What was all that about?”
She reached up and gently started petting my ears. I flinched slightly, still a bit suspicious after tonight’s trolling, but I let her continue. “Well I’d say nothing between us has really changed, but if any of our coworkers catch me petting you I at least have some documentation that says we’re in a relationship. Handy, right?”
“You want to pet me in front of other employees!?”
I felt myself blushing at just the thought of Sarah seeing this.
She chuckled “Well, before we get too off track, Morgan, I want to talk about the coven.”
“Right, yeah. Why’d you convince Lyris that was a thing?”
“Because it is a thing, cutie.”
My mouth hung open slightly as I tried to form a response to that, looking into her eyes for signs of more trolling.
“Okay, well, maybe not in the way that grandma’s smut portrays it, but witches do tend to be a bit poly.”
“Grandma’s smut?”
“While she was performing research in the other world she wanted a way to gather passive income, so she wrote some smut to publish there for the royalties. I’m not sure if the elves really understand the difference between smut and reality, but they seem to enjoy it all the same. Anyway, while it was loosely based on actual Earth witch covens, there’s concepts imported from elven culture to appeal to the local readers.”
Now I needed to know more. “So how do real covens work?”
“Well, witches are usually fairly independent folks, not to mention a bit introverted. We tend to want to do our own thing most of the time and rarely live together unless we’re working towards a common goal. But that doesn’t mean we don’t crave companionship. A coven is a group of witches and others who generally trust one another and share a bond. Sometimes there’s an informal leader, but it’s nothing like what’s described in LovCov.”
Sable paused to pet my tail a bit and gestured at a bookshelf. An old tattered manuscript flew out and she caught it. Handy. She showed it to me. It was an English-language draft of My Human Love Coven, apparently entered on a typewriter. The cover page had “BY ELOISE WARD” typed on it, but this had been crossed out and marked up with a marker: “Choose pen name.”
“What pen name did she pick?”
“Galadria, same as the elf documentarian in the story. Anyway, the relationship between coven members may be anywhere between ‘friends’, ‘family’, and ‘lovers’, and while there’s no cultural expectation that any particular member will be down to fuck, it is understood that any particular pairing within the coven is permissible, and that they can be fluid.”
“That sounds a lot more low commitment than I’m used to.”
“True, it’s low commitment compared to what normies think a relationship is on both sides of the portal, but human witches tend to be pretty laid back about relationships. This sound familiar at all to your childhood?”
“Now that you mention it, mom always did have a group of friends she’d spend time with, though I didn’t think they were romantic partners…”
“It’s not inconceivable that one of those ladies was your father.”
I didn’t respond or react for a few moments as memories of various of mom’s friends being nice to me and giving me support, advice, and gifts flashed through my head. “Okay, can’t deal with that right now. Moving on. What’s the deal with how covens are portrayed in ‘LovCov’?”
“Well, to make a long story short, elf relationships normally have strongly defined family roles. Not the same ones you see here, exactly, but the dominant parter makes all the family decisions, kind of similar to how it’s portrayed in LovCov. Grandma thought covens were too different from elven relationships to sell well, so she mixed in the local relationship dynamic.”
“Then why let Lyris think they work that way?”
“Because that’s how Lyris thinks it works, and wants it to work. If it doesn’t work that way, she’ll likely want to switch to an elven-style relationship, where it’s just you and her, by which I mean just her making decisions about, say, when to start building a family. This way, you don’t have to handle those discussions alone. I can veto if she tries to make your life decisions unilaterally.”
I blinked at her. Was that her plan all along? To help me out?
“You… did this to help me?”
“Well it took a bit of improv to get there but yes, I’d had that on my mind since she came home with you. While it’d be better for you if she just adopted standard coven practices, I hadn’t accounted for the possibility that she’d have read LovCov. That being the case, I was glad she suggested I be the mistress. I doubt you’d have agreed to it if I’d suggested it.”
I sighed. Elf culture was pretty weird, and this was a strange tactic to keep me from ending up raising half-elves with, I imagined, cat ears and wings, on another world. At least not without some arbitration from Sable, of all people.
“Ugh, can we not talk about this any more tonight? I want to get some sleep,” I said, eyeing the door and trying to decide if it was safe to go back to my room. I could tell Lyris was still awake. She’d notice.
Sable chuckled. “Well pretty kitty, since we’re more or less officially coven members now, I don’t mind you sleeping in here. Don’t worry, I won’t take advantage of you. You can feel free to use the cat bed, or share my bed.”
Using the cat bed was… not something I was willing to consider right now. But sleeping in Sable’s bed with her was also a level of uncomfortable I wasn’t ready for. I compromised by shifting to cat form and sleeping on an unused pillow on the bed. Sable seemed to enjoy this and gave me some nice pats before we both drifted off to sleep for the night.
I woke up the next morning to an odd sensation, like a patch of skin on my leg was buzzing. I leaned over and started licking the fur over that patch for a bit before I realized what I was doing and looked around, disoriented but slowly remembered going to sleep as a cat. Sable was sleepily watching me from the next pillow over, taking an interest in my reaction. She reached over and started petting me.
“Morning sleepy kitty. Your leg is buzzing. Probably your phone.”
Huh. I hadn’t really thought about what happened to my clothes or stuff in my pockets while I was in animal form, but it seemed like it… sort of still existed. I moved to the edge of the bed and shifted. It was weird that I was getting used to that. Pulling my phone out of my pocket I noticed that I’d let the battery run a bit low from not charging it overnight and also that I had received a few texts.
The first was from Sabrina: “mom calm 4 now”
The second was from Mom: “I’m coming by to get you on Saturday. Tell your master I’m challenging her to a duel.”
Holding my phone up so Sable could read it, I sighed. “Is witch dueling a thing?”
Sable read the message and nodded. “Ayup. Mages typically respect old fashioned dueling traditions. Some even do it with a straight face.”
I texted mom back: “Please don’t come here and fight my boss.”