Chapter 2
Two
A good brownie always follows the rules in A Good Brownie Does.
It’s how you get a utopia. - Arienna
Glancing up and down the street, I look for Fabia, my best friend. Despite the thick throng of people moving between the hollowed-out rock shops of Brownston’s city centre, she isn’t hard to spot. Whereas everyone else loves colour in all its glory, she only ever dresses in black.
Seeing she’s a good distance away, I duck down the alley. Blue luminescent moss hugs the rough rock walls on either side of me, so I instantly spot the woman I’ve come to see.
She’s leaning against one of the walls, one heel pressed against it, both of her hands hidden in the pockets of her rainbow-striped trench coat. She looks left and right, her beady eyes darting around as much as mine are.
“Hi,” I say, stopping in front of her. I throw a glance over my shoulder, but all I see is colour in the crowd – no black cloud thundering towards me. Yet. Turning back around, I look the woman in her green eyes. “I need a dozen dildos,” I say. “Quickly please.”
The woman nods, her blue pigtails swooshing over her shoulders. Opening up her trench coat, she shows me all she has inside. “Do you want dragon, fae, yondu, unicorn –”
“It doesn’t matter.” Pulling the bag off my shoulder, I open it for her to start shoving dildos into it. “Just hurry, please.”
I glance over my shoulder again, wondering how long I have before Fabia finds me. If she catches me buying this many back-alley dildos, she will instantly think I’m up to something ‘highly suspicious’.
She likes throwing those two words around a lot even when they’re not warranted in the slightest.
“It’s highly suspicious that you won’t let me inside your house, Arienna.”
“It’s highly suspicious that you’ve blood on your hands, Arienna.”
“It’s highly suspicious, Arienna, that you need a dozen dildos when I know you prefer vibrators.”
And whenever she thinks something is highly suspicious, she has a tendency to not let the matter drop until she’s uncovered what it’s all about.
Which always leads to her next favourite words: “You have to get rid of it!”
Followed by: “It’s not a pet, Arienna! It’s a monster!”
But Hyatt isn’t a monster. He’s just a misunderstood ball of fluff that is currently eating all of my furniture.
And he has rejected all of the chew toys I have brought back for him so far.
The flowers I picked for him, taken from the meadow that surrounds our town, were too soft.
The hand-crafted, wooden ornaments I brought home were made up of too many weird shapes that didn’t fit in his mouth.
The smooth rocks were too tough. But dildos.
They’re nice and rounded and just the right amount of hard.
Surely, he’ll like them better than my dining room table. Better than my sofa even. And my bed. And every other wooden thing I own. Including the stairs leading up to my bedroom on the second floor – and the kitchen.
My stomach growls, reminding me I haven’t eaten in two days. I would’ve eaten last night at the funeral orgy, but by the time I managed to put Hyatt to bed and head over to the party, all of the food was gone.
Well… not quite gone.
But although the entire town is well into sex, hosting orgies for every celebration, it still would have been highly suspicious if I’d gone around trying to lick chocolate and whipped cream off everyone while they boned.
So, alas, I went hungry.
Again.
But if Fabia hears my stomach growling, her eyes will narrow, and she’ll spy on me until she figures out why I’m acting so suspicious. Then she’ll find out I have once again brought home monsters. And then once again, she’ll make me get rid of them.
Because a good brownie does not bring home monsters.
And although I am a good brownie –I follow all 380 rules in our rulebook, A Good Brownie Does, and everything– it fails to define what a monster is, so… technically… what I’m doing is not suspicious.
When the last of the dozen dildos drops into my bag, I give the woman a nod of thanks and a four-second hug –a good brownie never hugs for less than that as it will feel shallow and no more than that as it’ll feel creepy– and then I hurry back towards the main street.
As the soft light of the alley gives way to the brighter sun, I breathe a sigh of relief.
My shoulders relaxing, I look left and right for Fabia. She is a few shops down, so I hurry into the hollowed-out rock beside me and pretend I’ve been here all along.
My stomach growls as I realise this is a food store. The sweet smell of aphid honeydew fills my nose, and I inhale on a sigh. With a wide, thankful grin, I grab a bowl of the sugar-rich goo and slurp it down.
Fabia enters right as I finish my meal. Her short lilac hair is the only colour on her – her long-sleeved shirt is black; her pants are black; the bag she has slung over one shoulder is black.
Even her nails are painted black. The only reason she keeps her hair her natural colour is because purple and black are the colours of Raza, and she’s obsessed with our fairy neighbours.
I don’t know why though. Raza is a cruel, barbaric place that pushes for peace through war.
It’s literally fighting with all of its neighbours but us: the Vylian fairies to the north, the snake-like Alzans to the east, the ant-like Jokeni to the west, and the beetle-like Okahi to the south.
Whereas, we skipped the whole war bit and just fucked our way to a utopia.
Weekly town-wide orgies go a loooong way to getting people to like their neighbours.
“What are you up to?” she asks, with suspicious silver eyes.
“Nothing,” I say, my eyes shifting, my face burning. Does she know about the dildos? I press a hand to my bag. “What would I be up to? I’m not up to anything?”
Her eyes narrow. “You should be. You just got dumped by your fiancé three days before your wedding.” She looks around the place, then grabs a gosberry and vanilla cake.
“We should be celebrating. Karl was a twat.” She grabs some ambrosia.
“Or we should be drowning your sorrows because even though he was a twat, it’s still hurtful you caught him banging your sister. ”
I force a smile on, complete with a little laugh.
“A good brownie is never sad. I’m happy, I swear.
” I look around at the other people in the shop and nod so they believe me.
I cannot go to jail today. If I don’t get home soon and feed Hyatt, he’s going to eat through the walls of my house.
And the first time I introduce him to Fabia, I don’t want it to be during a town-wide massacre.
Convincing her he isn’t a monster will be a bit harder, I’m sure, if I’m trying to pull someone out of his mouth.
She studies me for a moment longer, then sighs. “Alright. Let’s head back then, and you can help me with my book or something. At the very least, you shouldn’t be alone, even if you are brainwashed like everyone else is in this cult.”
I grin. Brainwashed. Cult. She loves Raza so much, she picks up a lot of their lingo. “Sounds fun!”
Putting the empty bowl back on the shelves for one of the store helpers to tidy away, I grab a handful of sweets off another shelf and shove them in my pocket.
If Hyatt doesn’t like his new chew toys, I’ll need the sweets to bribe him into not killing me.
Not because he’s mean or monstrous; he’s just a bit… accident prone.
“So my new book,” Fabia says as we leave the shop, “is called King Morningstar Gets Railed by the Entire Jokeni Army.”
My eyes widen. “But they have hundreds of thousands of soldiers!” He would die well before he got through them all. Probably via chaffing. Down there.
I shudder. She grins with sadistic, artistic license.
“Yeah. He gets turned into a proper cum bucket.”
I cock my head to the side. “I don’t think Jokeni have cum,” I say. I don’t know how similar they are to ants, but they sure do look like them – except, they stand upright on their back two-legs, and their other four limbs are arms.
She shrugs. “They have a witch, so they keep him alive.”
I nod as we cross the first roundabout, staying out of the way of rat-riders and rat-pulled carriages. There’s a stone statue in the middle of the circle – a brownie getting boned by a centaur, even though she’s not much bigger than one of its hooves. Magic can allow for many wonderful things.
“Well, that sounds like it’s going to be another good one then,” I say. “Maybe you can send it off to Raza, and they’ll put it in that library you always talk about.” She calls it the Secret Wonder of Gaera, but it’s actual name alludes me.
She smiles wryly. “I somehow don’t think their king will be as enthusiastic about my work as you are.”
I blink. “Why not? You’re a fantastic writer.”
Shaking her head, she punches me in the arm, and I grin. I don’t always understand her, but I know she’s telling me she loves me whenever she does that. I beam as we walk on. Colourful mushroom-shaped houses line both sides of the street now rather than the rocks of the city centre.
“But anyway, King Morningstar is having a bath in the third chapter, and given he’s royalty, he only bathes in the blood of newborns.”
“Of course.” Everyone knows that fact.
The next roundabout we pass has a gazebo in its centre, and it’s currently hosting a mini-orgy. The three women’s moans and the six men’s grunts follow us for a fair while.
“But,” Fabia says. “I have no idea how many babies he’ll need for – Oh! I have an idea.” She pivots so suddenly, by the time I turn around, she’s already running off. “I’ll meet you at my house!” she yells over her shoulder.
“Fabia!” I gasp. “You need to take yourself to jail. A good brownie never screams.” But she’s too far away to hear me, and I’m not bad enough to yell.
Shaking my head, I give up. Fabia never takes herself to jail anyway. And besides, now I don’t have to come up with a reason for not inviting her inside while I drop off my new things.
Turning back around, I hurry towards home. But my pace falters at the next roundabout. My heart flips as I look at the glass box on a post that’s sitting in the middle of this one.
Colourful hearts are painted on its sides, and sitting within, on a velvet cushion, is a beautiful emerald ring – free for anyone to take for their spontaneous proposals.
Karl proposed to me like that three weeks ago.
He opened the box after I gave him a blowjob and tossed it at me before I could even stand.
I was so giddy, I broke out into a dance right there on the spot.
My throat tightening, I look away. Karl might no longer want me in his life, but Hyatt and his five siblings do. With that in mind, I pat the bag of dildos and smile as bright as I can.