Chapter 262 – Happy Birthday

“What is that?” John wanted to know, his mouth watering. The table was decked with so much food that it would almost bend under the weight. Almost was turned into a certainty by the final thing Aclysia added to the table.

If John had to warrant a guess, the perfectly cooked meat, with its fried skin, crispy and covered in a multitude of spices, was probably some sort of dinosaur. “It’s a Turkheir,” Nathalia answered; “I told you I would get one of those.”

“But how… I mean what is that?” John didn’t feel like he had gotten a satisfactory answer yet.

“It – is – a Turkheir,” the dragoness repeated, obviously annoyed. “I went out and hunted it. Stealthy little things, hard to track down. I would just drown the entire landscape in ash, but that makes the meat dry and stiff. I thought this was your traditional meal.”

“No!” Rave exclaimed and pointed at the actual turkey. It was a wonderfully prepared meal in and of itself, but next to the raptor-like thing, the size of a fully grown pig, it looked like a tomato next to a fully prepared bowl of salad. “That’s what we meant!”

Nathalia eyed it up and then ripped one of the legs off the roasted bird and sank her teeth into it. After thoughtfully chewing she nodded, “Not bad, not as great as a Turkheir, however,” she said and then continued eating the turkey. There was no doubt she would eat a lot of both.

“Traditionally, the one whose birthday it is eats first,” Lydia said, making sure her tableware was correctly aligned with her plate, despite the fact that she was going to use it in a second.

“Who gives a fuck, I already cut the cake,” Thana declared and let a fork dance over her knuckles.

Now that the issue with her strength had, mostly, been resolved, Thana showed some rather stupendous dexterity. While this should come as no surprise, the sheer speed with which she picked everything up was frankly superhuman. Then again, Thana was just Thana.

The cake she was talking about was a marzipan covered, creamy thing that Aclysia had baked. Also, a dark chocolate cake that Lydia had arranged for the occasion. Also, some simple apple pie Momo had bought from a local store. Lastly, there was a coloured monstrosity Rave and John had made. The last entry on that list was definitely the worst.

Thana and Nathalia had tag-teamed to get all of it devoured within 15 minutes though. Everyone else had gotten like one slice of each pie, while the two ever hungry members of the crew, dragoness and blood mage, had stuffed their faces with the rest.

After a resting period, consisting of drinking tea, digesting, and keeping Sylph away from the presents she wanted to open too early, they went onto the feast. As per Lydia’s calculation, it was now around noon.

“Now get eating before this fucking table collapses!” Thana declared and everyone started loading their plates with what they wanted. Main attraction was the raptor meat, of course. The blood mage extended her hand to Nia, who looked at it blankly.

“Give me your plate, you blonde bimbo,” Thana told her with a furious expression, “Or do you not want to eat what that prehistoric monster dragged in.” A deep grumble came from the dragoness as she picked up on the insult. Had her teeth not been busy gnawing on the turkey bone, she may have responded.

Nia quickly handed over her plate; as always John couldn’t completely discern her reasoning. Either she was really, really hungry or Thana’s attitude scared her - or something else entirely. ‘Ah, whatever,’ he thought as Thana put a slice of the turkheir on the pariah’s plate, ‘I am just happy everyone gets along.’

He got himself a bit of the dinosaur meat. It was a light brown, and a layer of liquid fat spilled from the small space between crispy skin and actual meat. It was so tender that he could cut it with the side of his fork.

‘How did you even roast this?’ John wanted to know from Aclysia. Sure, it wasn’t as big as an actual dinosaur, but it was still way too big to fit into any oven they had access to. ‘Mistress Nathalia was nice enough to provide me with a lava pit, master,’ Aclysia provided an easy answer.

Okay, so he was about to eat some magical dinosaur roasted over a lava pit on a floating island above a magical city governed by a man that was several millennia old. Shit was whack. He cut himself a small piece of the slab of meat he had on his plate and hesitatingly ate it.

An explosion of flavours filled his mouth. The meat was subtly sweet, which harmonized nicely with the light sharpness of the pepper seasoning and the overall strong, meaty taste. If this had been that anime Rave had shown him recently, Shokuneki on Goma or something wabanese like that, his clothes would have exploded right now for just how great the meal was.

He combined it with whatever else he could get his hands on, gravy, beans, potatoes (fried and mashed alike), bacon, onions and everything else on the table. There was nothing that didn’t taste great with this meat.

“Thish tshe fucking besht,” John said with a full mouth. Nobody disagreed, mostly because they were all busy eating it as well. Even Lydia’s flawless table manners were slightly compromised by her desire to eat as much of it as possible. Not far enough for her to spill a single drop of fat on her napkin, but still.

Eventually, however, most participants of this feast had to give in to the sheer limitations of their bodies. First were the elementals, who could digest only small amounts of solid food in the first place, then the humans tagged out one by one. At that point about a third of the food still remained, but luckily they had two people who could keep eating for eternity.

Thana, who just converted everything into mana, and Nathalia, who…John wasn’t even sure where she left all that food, but as this was only a form she had assumed and he had no idea how big her true body was, he didn’t wonder about it either.

Eventually everything on the table was cleaned off, leaving a dinosaur skeleton and a less strained piece of wooden furniture. Nathalia was eating even the bones piece by piece.

“Is it time for the gifts now?” Rave asked fidgeting in excitement after Aclysia had brought everything that was to be cleaned to the kitchen.

“Most certainly,” Lydia said. “We are already behind schedule.”

“Ya can’t pin a schedule on Christmas!” the techno-lover complained.

“Why not?” Lydia wanted to know.

“Cause it’s Christmas!” Rave exclaimed,

John actually agreed that this was explanation enough.

The princess waved off. “Let us just get this over with.” They went over to the firefly lit tree, where John had placed the gifts he and his girlfriend prepared. Or, well, most of them were actually collaborative gifts of the whole group for one person, in an effort to not bring the gift count too high.

“Seeing as this is your birthday, I would say you get your gift first,” John said and handed her a relatively boring thing. A packet of not great size, red paper (the only they had and thus what was around every other present as well) wrapped around something soft on the inside.

“Please tell me you didn’t get me socks,” Thana glared at him with a sudden anger; “That would be downright retarded. I don’t even wear fucking shoes.”

“No. Just open it,” John urged her. After looking at him like he was the most loveable thing in the world for another few seconds, Thana ripped the paper off and spread out the thing that was inside.

A scarf, of black and white colour with a simple cross pattern on it, not particularly long either. “The fuck am I supposed to do with this?” Thana asked, turning the scarf in her hands. She pushed it against her face and inhaled deeply, “Smells like you guys, I like it, but I don’t like wearing clothes, you fuckers should remember that!”

“Just try it on,” Rave said, winking. Confused, the blood mage did.

“And what shit is su-“ Thana stopped midway through her sentence when Aclysia held a mirror in her direction that the guardian had fetched in anticipation. Falling silent, the blood mage looked at the image of herself that reflected in the mirror.

Skin, still pale but of a healthier, natural complexion, covered her now, and her white and azure hair had become a simple brownish black. She touched her face, pinched her cheeks in disbelief. Her eyes watered a little bit, she blinked several times to prevent tears from falling, the simple brown of her iris reflecting the light of the Christmas tree.

“I look normal,” she whispered, eyes glued to the mirror; “But… I am still me… nothing changed. The fuck’s going on?” Thana kept inspecting herself, blinking repeatedly to keep her view from blurring so much that she couldn’t see. It was doomed to fail, as eventually a single tear rolled down her face. More would soon follow.

“The scarf has that same enchantment as my tongue piercing,” Rave explained and stuck out said piece of metal. “I originally thought that I should get ya a piercing as well, but I thought ya had enough of metal objects stuck in your body for a lifetime.”

“We all pitched in some amount,” John added, “so it’s a gift from all of us.”

“Credit where credit is due, the idea was Rave’s,” Lydia commented.

Thana finally ripped her eyes away from the mirror and jumped at Rave. The techno-lover let out a surprised yelp as she was ripped to the ground with the force of the biggest hug that Thana could deliver without breaking anything. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the little bundle of insanity kept saying over and over.

Rave put her hand on the smaller girl’s head and gently brushed over her hair. “It’s all good,” she assured her.

“I am so sorry for what I did,” Thana said in a breaking voice.

“I know,” Rave said again.

“I just thought… it was going to be the end and…” words failed Thana, drowned by a tremble and choked sounds.

Rave pulled the hood of her robe over her head. “I know,” the pink-haired girl whispered back; “Ya don’t need to say a thing, I forgive you. I am stronger than you give me credit for, ya know? Few days of torture don’t break this girl!”

“But… you… I…” Whatever answer or further apologies Thana had, they were drowned the second time when John saw her cry. Sobbing as they both lied on the floor, Christmas saw the day Thana came clear with Rave. Although John’s girlfriend had forgiven Thana a long time ago, although the tortured girl had thought to be on the path of redemption already, although everyone in that room agreed that the two were not enemies in any way.

It wasn’t until Thana choked on tears again as she tried to force out her apologies that both of them fully relaxed, any remaining animosity at the back of their heads was gone, and left behind what had happened months ago.

“Happy birthday, Thana,” Rave said as she embraced the saved woman.