“That is a lie!” Niv suddenly blurted out, her voice rising in pitch with clear horror. “Too many! Not real. Can’t be real. Too scary.”
She shook her head rapidly as if trying to physically shake the idea out of her mind. Her ears flattened hard against the sides of her head, and her tail wrapped tightly around her legs. The numbers Juno had just described clearly did not fit anywhere inside Niv’s understanding of the world.
Juno felt a small pang of guilt in her chest. She had only been trying to answer the question honestly. Niv had asked how many humans lived nearby, and that had led to explaining how many lived in the country. Juno had even tried to emphasize that New Zealand’s population was considered small by global standards.
In hindsight, maybe that had been a mistake.
For someone who had probably never imagined more than a handful of humans existing in one place, hearing about millions was probably the conversational equivalent of being dropped into the deep end of a lake.
Juno opened her mouth slightly, then closed it again, unsure what the best way to respond was.
The two of them had been talking for hours now. The conversation had wandered across dozens of strange topics, from food to hunting to human houses to Niv’s forest territory. At some point the night had quietly slipped away without either of them really noticing. Now the faint golden light of early morning was slowly beginning to creep through the gaps in the curtains.
Juno noticed it first when the light brushed across the wall beside her.
She blinked slowly, and then a long yawn forced its way out of her mouth before she could stop it.
“Oh wow,” she muttered quietly, rubbing one of her eyes.
Meanwhile Niv still looked deeply unsettled.
“Well,” Juno said after a moment, her voice softer now, “I’m not lying. But… sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that so suddenly.”
Niv’s breathing slowly steadied a little, though she still looked shaken. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, curling into a small protective ball on the couch. Her ears remained pinned against her head.
“Not… not your fault,” Niv said after a moment, speaking much more quietly now. “Shouldn’t have asked.”
Juno winced slightly.
The poor cryptid looked like she had just learned something deeply disturbing about the universe.
“Okay,” Juno said gently, trying to sound reassuring. “Well, I am still sorry for the shock.”
She stretched slightly and let out another tired yawn that she could not quite suppress.
“But also I really need to sleep,” she admitted. “I’ve been awake all night.”
She glanced over at Niv and smiled a little despite her exhaustion.
“It was really nice talking with you though. I honestly had a lot of fun. I can’t wait to do it again.”
Niv’s ears twitched slightly at that, but her confusion quickly returned.
“Saying goodbye?” she asked uncertainly. “But we are the dating, yes?”
Juno blinked slowly while her tired brain tried to process that sentence. Then she rubbed both of her eyes with her hands.
“I guess… technically yes?” she said slowly. “But humans usually take things slowly when it comes to dating. At least most humans do.”
She leaned back slightly against her chair while trying to gather her thoughts.
“I’d like to get to know you a bit better first before we become anything official. And… honestly I also need to research some things.”
That last part slipped out before she could stop herself.
Niv tilted her head slightly.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
Some of the excitement drained out of her posture almost immediately.
“Okay. Understand.”
Her ears drooped a little, and her shoulders slumped as she sat there hugging her knees. She looked a bit deflated now, like a balloon that had slowly lost some of its air.
“Hey,” Juno said after a moment, trying to gather the last bit of focus her very tired brain still had. Her voice sounded a little rough from talking all night, and she rubbed one of her eyes again as she spoke. “I really do want to see you again though. This was… actually really nice. Could you maybe come back in four days?”
She hesitated a little as she asked that, because she honestly was not sure if that kind of request would even make sense to Niv. Humans were used to planning things days ahead of time, writing dates on calendars and arranging schedules around work and other obligations. But Niv lived in the forest and hunted her own food, and from everything Juno had heard tonight, her life definitely worked very differently. For a moment Niv stood there thinking, her large ears twitching slightly as she processed the question. The source of this chapter is novelping dot com.
“Okay. Yes. Will do so,” Niv said after a short pause.
Juno nodded and gave a small, relieved smile. “Good. I’m glad.” She slowly pushed herself upright, feeling the stiffness in her back and shoulders the moment she moved.
The night had slipped by much faster than she expected, and now that the excitement of the conversation was fading, the exhaustion was catching up with her all at once. She stretched her arms high above her head and let out a long yawn that she did not even try to hide. After that she motioned toward the front of the house and started walking, clearly expecting Niv to follow. The tall woman rose from the couch, which creaked slightly as the weight lifted off it, and then she carefully walked after Juno down the short hallway.
When they reached the door, Juno unlocked it and pulled it open, letting the cool early morning air drift inside. The sky outside had already started turning pale with sunrise, and the forest beyond the yard looked quiet and still. Juno turned back toward Niv and gave her a tired but genuine smile. “I can’t wait to see you again,” she said, and despite how sleepy she felt she meant it.
“Bye Juno,” Niv replied.
The tall woman had to angle herself slightly to squeeze through the doorway and once she stepped outside, she straightened up again and began walking across the yard. After a few steps she stopped and turned around to look back at the house. Juno was still standing in the doorway watching her, so she lifted one hand and gave a small wave.
Niv stared at the gesture for a second before copying it, raising her own arm and giving a large enthusiastic wave back. Then, almost immediately afterward, she turned again and broke into a sudden sprint toward the treeline. Despite her size she moved blindingly fast, her long legs covering the distance in only a few seconds. By the time Juno blinked she was already reaching the trees, and a moment later she disappeared into the forest entirely.
Juno stood in the doorway for another second, staring at the empty spot where Niv had vanished. Eventually she let out a long, tired sigh and closed the door behind her. After locking it she shuffled down the hallway toward her bedroom, moving slowly like someone whose body had finally realized it had stayed awake far longer than it should have. When she reached the bed she did not even bother changing clothes, she simply collapsed onto the mattress face first, still fully dressed, and within moments she was completely asleep.
The next day Juno spent most of her time sitting at her computer, leaning forward slightly in her chair while the pale light of the monitor filled the room. A half-finished mug of coffee sat beside the keyboard, slowly going cold while she focused on the screen. Ever since she had woken up late that afternoon, after collapsing into bed without even changing clothes the previous day, her thoughts had kept circling back to the same thing.
Niv.
The whole situation still felt strange, even though creatures like her were not exactly unheard of in the world. Cryptids and supernatural beings were a known quantity, at least in the sense that most people accepted they existed. Governments acknowledged them, scientists studied them when they could, and there were entire online communities dedicated to sightings, encounters, and the complicated topic of interacting with them. Hell, some were even celebrities. No one was surprised when it came out that Keanu Reeves was a six hundred year old vampire.
The thing was that they were still extremely uncommon, especially in everyday life. Most people went their entire lives without meeting one in person.
Juno had apparently skipped that statistic entirely and gone straight to accidentally dating one.
So naturally she was doing what anyone in her situation would probably do: research.
Her search history had quickly become a strange collection of phrases that she would never have imagined typing a few days earlier. Things like dating a cryptid, relationships with supernatural partners, and what to expect when dating nonhuman species. At first she felt a little silly about it, but after opening a few forums and reading through posts she realised there were actually thousands of discussions about the subject.
Apparently she was far from the first person to end up in a situation like this.
There were huge collections of personal accounts from people all over the world describing relationships with various supernatural beings. Some of them sounded wholesome and surprisingly normal once you got past the sometimes unusual biology involved. Others sounded like absolute disasters that probably should never have happened in the first place.
One long thread described a woman in Greece who had been dating a lamia for several years. She went into incredible detail about what daily life was like, including the practical challenges of living with someone who had a human upper body but a long serpentine lower half. There were also cultural things that had taken time to figure out, like hunting instincts, territorial behaviour, and the way lamias apparently viewed long-term partnerships. Apparently they are fiercely loyal and monogamous, but also could be clingy and jealous often.
Another post Juno read came from a man somewhere in the United States who claimed he had been married for nearly a decade to one of the so-called Men of the Forest. From what he described, they were some kind of woodland spirit or ancient cryptid species that lived deep in protected forests. His post rambled quite a lot, but it included stories about learning to respect territorial boundaries and dealing with a partner who had instincts that were very different from a normal human’s.
There was also an account written by a man in Japan who described dating a kitsune. That story started out fairly charming, with descriptions of clever tricks and playful teasing that his fox-spirit girlfriend apparently enjoyed. Unfortunately the story took a much darker turn near the end when he explained that the relationship eventually fell apart and she had tried to kill him during a particularly bad argument.
Juno leaned back slightly in her chair after reading that part and stared at the screen for a moment.
That kind of ending, disturbingly enough, was not especially rare in the stories she was finding. A lot of people talked about supernatural partners having instincts or cultural habits that humans were not always prepared for. Sometimes those instincts could lead to dangerous situations if the relationship was not handled carefully. Lewd times between a centaur and their partner were… difficult.
That thought sat in the back of Juno’s mind while she continued scrolling through posts.
Despite the massive amount of information she was finding about supernatural relationships in general, there was one thing she could not find at all.
Nobody seemed to have written anything about dating a Moehau.
She tried searching multiple different ways just in case the spelling was wrong. She looked through folklore records, wildlife documentation pages, and older cryptid research forums that looked like they had not been updated in years. There were some scattered references to sightings in remote parts of New Zealand, and a few vague historical mentions that described encounters between explorers and very large humanoid creatures in dense forests, but that was about it.
Mostly just sightings.
A couple of incident reports that sounded suspiciously like someone had wandered somewhere they should not have, and absolutely nothing about relationships or personal experiences.
Juno sighed quietly and leaned back in her chair, rubbing the side of her face with one hand while staring at the ceiling.
“Well that’s helpful,” she muttered sarcastically to herself.
Since she clearly was not going to find anyone with the exact same situation, she decided to try something slightly different. Instead of looking specifically for Moehau information, she opened several advice boards where people discussed relationships between humans and supernatural beings. If nothing else, maybe someone there would have useful advice about navigating cultural differences, instincts, and communication with a partner who was not human.
It still felt a little strange thinking of Niv as a partner already.
But considering the giant forest woman had confidently declared that they were “dating,” it seemed like something Juno probably needed to figure out before four days passed and Niv came back expecting answers.
Juno leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling for a while, letting the soft hum of her computer fill the quiet room while her thoughts wandered in circles. The screen in front of her was still full of forum threads and advice posts, but she had stopped scrolling for the moment because her brain was getting a little tangled up trying to think through everything at once. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
The main question she kept coming back to was a pretty simple one.
What exactly did she want out of this?
It was not the kind of situation she had ever imagined herself being in. Dating in general had always been a bit awkward for her since Lucy, and now somehow she had skipped straight past normal dating problems and landed in something much stranger. There was also the question of whether the whole situation was even ethical in the first place. Juno tapped one finger lightly against the desk while she thought about that part.
It probably was ethical… right?
After all, Niv had been the one who started the whole thing. She had shown up, she had declared that they were dating, well, dating adjacent, and she had seemed completely confident about the idea. There had not been any pressure from Juno’s side at all. If anything, Juno had mostly been reacting to the situation while trying to keep up with Niv’s strange way of explaining things.
So that probably meant it was fine.
At least that was what Juno told herself while staring at the screen again.
Another issue she kept thinking about was what they would actually do together. Dating usually involved activities. People went out to restaurants, saw movies, visited different places around town, or just spent time walking around the city. Those were normal date ideas, but unfortunately most of those options probably would not work very well here.
Niv had seemed genuinely nervous about humans in general, and the idea of bringing a towering cryptid woman into town felt like a terrible plan for several different reasons. Juno could easily imagine the panic that would happen if someone like Niv walked down the street in the middle of Buntoun. So that option was definitely off the table.
Juno slowly spun her chair a few inches from side to side while she thought about alternatives. Maybe they could just keep things simple. Niv clearly liked being out in the forest, and Juno liked hiking well enough when the weather was good. Maybe they could go walking together, explore the trails, and just talk the way they had done the night before.
That had actually been pretty nice.
She could also introduce Niv to some human things slowly over time. Food had seemed to go over very well already, and there were probably other small things that might interest her if she explained them properly.
Yeah.
Maybe the best approach was to treat this as normally as possible and just see what happened.
Of course the problem with treating it like a normal situation was that the situation itself was very much not normal.
For one thing, Niv was enormous.
Juno had thought about that a few times already, and every time it still felt slightly surreal. The other woman was easily half again as tall as she was, with broad shoulders, thick muscles, and those huge branching antlers rising up from her head like something out of an old forest myth. Juno rubbed the back of her neck and felt her face getting a little warm as the memory came back.
Apparently she had a thing for women with antlers.
This was new information.
Juno had never once considered that possibility before yesterday, but now that she had seen it in person her brain seemed very willing to accept it as a valid attraction. She shook her head slightly and tried to focus on the screen again instead of thinking too hard about that particular detail.
For a while she continued browsing through different forum threads, reading other people’s stories and occasionally opening posts that offered advice about cross-species relationships. Some of the suggestions were surprisingly practical. People talked about respecting cultural differences, communicating clearly about boundaries, and remembering that supernatural beings often had instincts or traditions that humans might not immediately understand.
A lot of the posts also repeated a similar idea.
At the end of the day, both people in the relationship still had their own autonomy. As long as both sides were adults and capable of making their own choices, the relationship itself was their business. That seemed to be the general attitude most communities had settled on over the years.
Juno nodded slowly to herself while reading that part.
That made sense.
Niv was clearly an adult, and she seemed perfectly capable of making her own decisions and Juno was obviously capable of doing the same thing on her side. So from that perspective, there really was not anything inherently wrong with the situation.
Then another thought suddenly popped into her head.
Juno blinked and leaned back again while staring at the ceiling.
“Wait,” she murmured quietly to herself.
If humans were the scary monsters in Niv’s understanding of the world… then what did that make Niv?
Her mouth slowly curled into an amused grin.
“Does that mean she’s the monster fucker?” she muttered under her breath.