Time Alone
Dragons have no sexual desire. That is a simple fact.
Ask for the reason, and the answer is straightforward enough. They leave no descendants. And so there was never any call for a sexual drive that existed for the sake of reproduction.
Their tails might be sensitive, but that is only a trait of the body part itself; it does nothing to stir desire on its own. Perhaps that is why even beings so close to omniscience claimed they knew little of sexual matters in any detail.
Probably.
"W-What did you say...?"
"Do lots of it with Mari too."
Mari's eyes shone as she declared she wanted the same love Athena and I had shared at night. I could only stammer and flounder like a songbird struck by lightning.
Mari... with m-me...?
Her words left me more than a little shaken. C-Could Mari have been looking at me as a sexual object all this time? The thought was so far beyond anything I had imagined that my mind spun into even deeper confusion.
It had not been long since Athena—whom I had always thought of as family—confessed to me. Absurd fantasies kept rising unbidden to the surface. Mari's words dragged every sort of lewd delusion into the light, but I shook my head hard and cast them out.
This was not some stranger. A mother and daughter joining their bodies—heaven itself would not think twice about striking such an immoral act down. Even entertaining the idea meant I had no right to be called a mother.
I spent a long while trying to grasp Mari's true intent again. And then I noticed something odd.
Athena had said, quite clearly, that dragons possessed no sexual desire whatsoever. So why would Mari feel that kind of urge toward me? I could not make sense of it. Simple curiosity? ...Or something else?
"M-Mari. Do you actually know what that is when you say it...?"
"Yeah! It's what people who love each other do!"
Her answer turned my doubt into certainty. Mari was misunderstanding. She believed the things Athena and I had done that night were simply expressions of love.
She was not wrong. The problem was that the love Mari spoke of and the love I held in my heart were not the same thing.
I loved Mari too. But that love was nothing like what I felt for Athena. It was only a mother's love for her daughter—never a lover's feelings. In Mari's eyes, though, Athena's love and the love between the two of us must have looked identical. Dragonkin could not parse the finer shades of a human heart.
That was why she had said she wanted to do it as well. Not because she harbored any sexual desire for me, but because she needed to prove that she and I were bound by love.
Relief settled through me. Of course. There was no way my precious daughter was looking at me with those kinds of eyes.
I drew a long breath and clasped both of Mari's hands firmly in mine.
"Mom...?"
Her cheeks flushed pink as she gazed up at me, full of expectation. Mari still knew so little about love. It might be a touch early, but the time had clearly come to give my daughter a proper education on the subject.
.
.
.
Some time later.
"Haa..."
I turned my fork over and over between my fingers and let out a deep sigh. I was sitting in the mansion's dining hall. Ordinarily Mari would have been with me, but she was thoroughly sulking, so I had been forced to come alone.
I had explained family love and a lover's love to her in careful detail—what each one was, and how they differed. I told her that the scene she had witnessed that night was the affectionate expression of love shared between lovers. And so, in the end, I told her I could not do those things with her.
The look on Mari's face then was the look of someone who had lost the entire world.
"...Then I'll be Mom's lover too!"
"N-No, Mari. We're family...?"
"Why? Why can't family do it?"
"Uh...? W-Well, because that's just how it is...?"
"Nooo!! Mari's gonna lick Mom's naked body too!!"
"M-Mari?!! You can't say things like that to Mom..!"
"....I hate Mom."
"Ugh..."
Just remembering it made my head throb all over again. I had never imagined raising a daughter would be this hard. And because she was another species entirely, teaching her ordinary common sense turned out to be far more difficult than I had ever expected.
Another sigh slipped out before I could stop it. If I wanted to keep an ideal mother-daughter relationship, I would have to take my time teaching Mari about family love for a while yet. She had been such a pretty, sweet, filial little girl. How had things come to this?
"...It was my fault for getting caught in the first place..."
The reason Mari had changed so suddenly was obvious. She had seen Athena and me joining our bodies. Put that way, I had nothing left to say. To witness something like that at her age—how shocking must it have been from Mari's side? A part of me still felt it was unfair, but the blame was mine without question.
...You can do this, Hera.
Hadn't I decided to become a good mother? It was far too early to sink into self-loathing. Yes, I had rejected her and made her sad for now. But given time, Mari would surely come to understand how beautiful the love between family could be. When that day arrived, perhaps I could stop being this hopeless mother and become her true guardian instead.
I pictured Mari running toward me someday with a bright, carefree smile, and I made a firm vow.
Wait for me, Mari. I'll become a good mother for you. I swear it...!
Of course, I had no way of knowing that while I was making that vow, Mari was making a deep vow of her own in the darkness of my room.
Inside the writhing blankets, a pair of blue eyes gleamed with lethal light in the pitch-black dark.
"...She rejected me... Mom rejected Mari....."
The small girl kept muttering to herself in the empty room.
"Mari doesn't care anymore either... It's Mom's fault.... Because it's Mom's fault..."
Should she change the ingredients in the medicine she gave her, just a little? Or should she slowly train Mom's body while she slept? She had already learned every scrap of knowledge there was about taming beasts. As she was now, she was more than qualified to become Mom's master.
...It's all right. I can endure it. I'll wait.
She wanted nothing more than to act out every thought swirling through her head with Mom right that instant, but she held herself back for the sake of what came later. Time was on her side. Let a thousand years pass, ten thousand—in the end, the only one left at Mom's side would be her. When that moment arrived, she would unleash every desire she had been bottling up.
The small girl smiled at the thought.
"...Wait for me, Mom."
Because she would become a daughter Mom could not help but love.
I was sitting in the dining hall, steeling my resolve for the sake of a harmonious mother-daughter bond, when the cook entered carrying the food.
The face was familiar, though I did not know the name. This was the person who had helped me the time I made fried chicken. And, conversely, one of the many people in this mansion I had disappointed.
While the cook set the dishes on the table in silence, I could only keep my head bowed low. No matter how many times I told myself it would be fine, facing any of them directly still frightened me.
"Th-Thank you for the meal..."
As the cook finished laying everything out and turned to leave, I offered a timid word of thanks. Whether my tiny voice—small as a mouse dropping—had reached him or not, he paused for a moment. The sudden halt made my body flinch; I dropped my gaze again at once.
"...."
I could not see his expression, but he stood there looking at me in silence for a while before finally walking out. Only when the dining hall fell quiet again did I dare lift my head.
...I should have said I'd eat in my room.
I had always taken meals with Athena and Mari as a matter of course, so my feet had carried me here without thinking. But with Athena gone, eating in my room might have been the wiser choice.
I steadied my trembling body as best I could and began putting food into my mouth little by little. Without Athena—who had always shared every meal with me—the taste seemed faintly bitter.
"Athena will be all right..."
I murmured it under my breath. Even though she herself had said she was fine, I still worried. She had gone under the pretext of confinement, after all, and the other party was the imperial palace that ruled this entire empire. Of course even the empire could not lay a careless hand on Athena—but the unease refused to leave me.
I brainwashed myself that everything would be fine and took another bite. The lonely, desolate flavor only deepened.
.....It's been a long time since I've been alone like this.
Perhaps because it had been so long since I last had time to myself, all sorts of sentimental thoughts drifted through me. I remembered the very first moment I had possessed this body. Back then I had sworn I would never interfere with the original story. How had I ended up here?
If my old self could see me now, they would grab me by the collar and scream that I had lost my mind. The image made a quiet snicker slip out of me.
Things had not gone according to plan. But I felt no regret. I had been able to meet so many precious people, after all.
Dania unnie, who had always been so considerate and warm in caring for me—though that bond now lived only in memory—and Lily, my beloved little sister. My daughter Mari, a little twisted at the moment but still believing in me and following me, and Sepheer, clumsy in places yet kind at her core. And last of all, the one who had become my entire world.
Athena.
Just picturing her smiling at me filled my chest with warmth. In the beginning I had hated her enough to want her dead. Before I knew it, I had become someone who could not live without her. I was pathetic—yet the moment I stood at Athena's side, every scrap of anxiety vanished.
"...I'm full."
For some reason I had no appetite today. Feeling that nothing more would go down, I set my fork aside. Looking at the table, I saw plates that had barely been touched.
Athena would hate this...
On the days I failed to eat properly, Athena would always sit beside me and force the food into my mouth herself. She would scold me for being too thin and insist I needed to eat more.
...I already missed her.
The memory made the longing surge up all over again. She had said she would return tonight. Surely she would be here soon.
Thinking of the woman who had not even been gone half a day, I started to rise from my seat.
"Cough."
Something surged back up from deep inside me, and a cough tore free. My throat burned as if it were on fire; at the same time a metallic, warm taste flooded my mouth. A cold sweat slid down my spine.
I slowly rolled my eyes downward. What I saw was a considerable pool of red liquid soaking the floor.
It did not take long to understand that it was my own blood.
"....Huh?"
Cough—
Before I could even grasp what was happening, I vomited another enormous mouthful of blood. My body toppled straight to the ground.