Chapter 161: Bibliophile
Taylor’s ship slowly departs in the distance while we stand on the beach, looking at the horizon.
“Today was definitely an eventful day.” My sister remarks. “Collecting stuff, building stuff, poison stuff, swimming stuff, pétanque stuff, teleportation stuff and to round it all off, pirate stuff.”
“Privateer stuff.” Hilda raises her finger with a cheeky smile.
“Yeah yeah.” Lise rolls her eyes and pushes away the correction.
“But you are definitely right, it’s been a pretty exhausting day. Especially for Sam and I.”
Sam nods. “I am pretty tired, that’s true.”
“That said, I think I will already go to bed.”
I raise my hand. “I do still want to say something concerning the new skill that I discovered… but that can wait for tomorrow.”
“Then why mention it now?” My sister smiles.
“Because otherwise I might forget and now you’ve all heard…”
“Smart.” My sister rubs her hand through my hair.
“Hehe.”
Hilda laughs. “Yes, let’s leave that for tomorrow when everyone’s got a fresh mind.” She then looks back at her hut and then back at us. “Good night everyone.”
“Good night, Hilda.” I hop over to give her a big hug. She gives me a big hug back.
“I think Lise and I will stay up for a bit longer, laze around next to the campfire. I also took a book along that I want to read.” Nikki says as she takes a book out of her inventory. It’s leather bound.
“Is that a spell book?” Sam tilts her head and squints.
“It is!”
“Where did you get that, the Dwarger don’t use spells, do they?”
“Someone sold books back in the city that they’d found on the battlefield. I think this belonged to some kind of magic user from the Theocracy. I’ve not had any time to read it yet though.”
“Oh.” Sam nods.
“Hey, if you tell me ahead of time that you want to read books in this world. I think I could put them in the treasury so you could transfer books over from our world.”
“...” Nikki’s eyes go wide.
“Calm there, Nikki.” Lise chuckles.
“But think about all the possibilities! I would have so much time to read the books I want to read!”
“Might be best not to do so when there’s people from this world around though.” I giggle too. “Just in case they ask what kind of advanced book binding technique you are using.”
“Right.” Nikki laughs. “But thanks for that proposition Ami. I will certainly make use of that in the future.”
I then turn my attention to my girlfriend. “What about you, Sam?” I take her hand and give it a soft squeeze. “Are you going to go to bed yet?”
“I’m not sure.” At that moment Sam yawns. “Okay, maybe I should. But you don’t have to come and join me.”
I look at my sister and Nikki. Élise gives me a wink.
“Hmm, I think I will join you anyway, it’s been a pretty long day for me too.”
“Alright.” Sam smiles and gives me a quick kiss. “I suppose we are both gonna head to bed too then. Good night you two.” She uses her other hand to wave our family goodnight.
“Good night and have fun.” My sister chuckles before she gets elbowed by Nikki.
“Have a good night’s rest.” Nikki waves us off while Sam and I walk towards our hut, hand in hand.
“Nini!”
When we reach our hut, Sam almost immediately drops onto the bedroll, placed on some soft bedding material.
“Oh, Goddess, that feels good. I think I will just sleep like this.” She speaks face first into her bedroll.
“I think you should get your clothes off first, Sam.”
“Nah, I’ll just… sleep.”
“Saaaam.”
“Alright.” She chuckles and rolls over so she can look at me. “Want to help me get my clothes off?” She puts on a pouty face for some extra convincing power.
Of course I’d already fallen for her the second she asked but I will take every single bit of extra Sam cuteness I can get. I’m a simple cat girl after all.
I help her with taking off her clothes, rapidly reducing her to her underwear.
“That feels a lot better. Thanks babe.” She pomfs down on her back yet again before crawling into her bedroll.
“Hehe.” I then quickly get out of my own clothes too before I join her in the bedroll as well. “And with two it feels even better than alone.”
“Amen to that.” Sam gives me a kiss on my cheek and starts cuddling close against me. She then starts playing with my right ear, it tickles quite a bit.
“Hehe, Sam, whatcha doing.”
“Playing with yer ear, can’t you tell.” She giggles softly.
“I can. Any particular reason?”
“Not really, I just wanted to.” She then traced a circle around my ear. “I did see a cute gif Max sent me about this one anime. It had this catgirl who had literally an ear ring around her ear. It looked pretty funny.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“So, the way I’m tracing your ear right now.” She continues circling the base of my ear with her index finger.
“Mhmm.” I nod.
“She has a metallic ring around that.”
“Ah! So literally an ear ring!”
“That’s what I said.” She laughs.
“Can you send me the image too once we get back to… our place?”
“I can also just show you.” Sam stops tracing my ear and gives me a kiss on the cheek instead. “Actually, maybe we should even watch that anime together.”
“Do you know what’s it about?”
“From what Max told me, it’s about a catgirl who kind of gets adopted by this sentient two-handed sword who’s actually a woman from earth who got thrown into another dimension.”
“That… sounds like a lot of those isekai stories, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does.” She nods with a smile. “But Max says she really likes it. She says it’s super wholesome to see the interaction between the girl and her adopted momsword.”
That makes me giggle quite a bit. “Hehe… And what’s it called?”
“Uh… I’m pretty sure it was something among the lines of ‘Yeeted into another dimension and reborn as a Zweihander.’ Or something like that.”
This makes me laugh even more. “Oh my, it even has one of those typical light novel titles.”
Sam starts laughing as well. “It does.”
“Well, I guess it sounds fun so we can definitely give it a try!”
“Huzzah.” After she says that she squeezes me closer yet again and yawns pretty loudly. “I should probably try to sleep a bit.”
“Mhmm.” I nod once more. “I’ll be right here if you need me. I won’t be going anywhere.”
“I know.” She kisses me for one last time. “Good night, sweetie.”
“Good night, Sam. I love you.”
“Love you too.” She closes her eyes.
I can tell from her breathing that she falls asleep shortly afterwards. Leaving me awake, yet happy and content, in the arms of my girlfriend. I’m not really that tired but the distant sound of the campfire and the ocean does have a very calming effect on me. And since I don’t really know what to expect from tomorrow, I decide to close my eyes and catch some rest as well. Yet I don’t really drift asleep as easily as I have imagined.
My thoughts mainly go to the rings that I’ve ordered from Roderick and how excited I am to show them to Sam. An excitement I do desperately want to hide from her as I want to surprise her. I’ve not really surprised her with any gift so far, apart from telling her that I’m a catgirl of course. So I really want to make this first time a great experience for both of us. At least it looks like Hilda and my sister won’t say a thing to her either. So it falls to me to keep it quiet.
-Maybe I should try to film her unaware when I finally hand over the rings. Because I want to cherish the feeling from surprising her, forever. I guess I could try to ask my sister to film it. That way it would be a lot less obvious than me messing with my phone…-
I keep running plans through my head, but the more I think about it, the more absurd those plans are getting until finally, when a sunray hits my face, I wake up.
-Those plans do make a lot more sense now that I realize that I was dreaming…-
I look outside, the sun is indeed shining quite brightly however. When I look over to my girlfriend next to me, she’s still sleeping pretty soundly. Even my passive aura of healing must not really have been overcome that exhaustion… that or she is so comfy that she doesn’t want to wake up yet. Which might be the more logical conclusion.
I smile and scratch my girlfriend behind her ears, gently enough so that I don’t wake her.
A soft rumbling of purring noises means that my plan has succeeded.
-I need to take advantage of the fact that my girlfriend is a catgirl in this world too, y’know. It would be a big shame not to.-