.
Most fairies take measures to avoid harming the mortals with whom they play. If they are like my grandmother, they will gently mold their minds to insure no harm and a safe return to their mortal lives, but most fairies instead perform a temporary bewitchment that leaves behind only blurred or confusing memories. It’s an easier trick to play on the mortal, but it runs the risk of leaving the mortal ‘touched’.
Those who become “fair-touched’ or “fairy-touched” become persistently intoxicated while with fairy companionship and slide into debilitating apathy and depression when deprived of that companionship.
But most fairies, when they find they have caused this state, will cure it themselves if they are able, or bring the affected mortal to someone who can cure them.
When Mother taught Tiana about it, she confessed that she had caused it once in her life, when she was still a child by fairy standards. She had accidentally discovered the main cause of the affliction, which was when the fairy begins to use their ability to affect mortal minds in order to directly manipulate their sensation of pleasure.
“You may or may not have the ability,” she told her sternly, “but if you ever discover that you have it, don’t use it.”
But unlike Mother, there are fairies who don’t care, who cruelly play without a thought to what they are doing and don’t hesitate to abandon their addled victims once they are harmed. Naturally, those with such a callous attitude don’t take pains to avoid causing it, either.
With luck, girls who are left behind in such a state will have families who can seek the help to cure them, but of course, there will be girls without the means or support from loved ones.
If nobody steps forward to pay for treatment, fairy-touched girls will eventually end up in a place like this, where the knowledge to make them functioning members of society again is available. Naturally, it isn’t free, and by the time they arrive, they have sunk into a severe state for which the treatment is a long process. So, they live for ‘free’ and get treatment for ‘free’ by serving as the staff of this bathhouse.
Thanks to the social stigma and the loss of their original life options before they were affected, those no longer in need of treatment often stay on, receiving a wage instead of treatment.
They also employ women who were never in need of treatment, who were career prostitutes who simply wanted to be employed here. That was why the manager tested me when I arrived, even though I wasn’t acting in any way fairy-touched. But the fact that this establishment primarily relied on fairy-touched women killed my enthusiasm to feed again.
I declined the private bath, and paid the normal entrance fee (for bathing and dining only, other services charged a la carte) so I could have a bath and then have dinner while waiting for Serera to show up.
If the lobby had been a scene from 1001 Arabian Nights, the bathing area directly next to it was a Roman bathhouse. But that wasn’t acceptable, thanks the male customers present, enjoying a bath with a selection of the staff.
“Honored Guest?” the girl leading me asked as I halted and shook my head.
“Is there nowhere to bathe that’s a bit less open? I’m not here to exhibit myself to men,” I told her.
Her name was Laneia, a light-blue-haired girl dressed similarly to the girls in the lobby, which is to say, not much. After I paid the fee to enjoy the non-private portion of the facilities, the hostess had told her to show me the facilities.
“I never imagined that you were, Honored Guest,” she replied smoothly without batting an eye. “We can enter the female-only sections through there.”
She pointed at an archway covered in beads in the back wall. It was a right turn at the bottom of the stairs where I had stopped.
“Female-only?”
“Honored Guest,” Laneia said with a gentle voice, “Our most important customers are true fairies. This house was built for them. They surely do not wish to bathe in front of men, either.”
“Ah ha ha,” I laughed with a bit of embarrassment, realizing how obvious that was. Of course, most of the place would be off-limits to men.
As she led me toward that archway, she stated, “Men are restricted to the lobby and the private rooms in the front building, to this bath wing, and to the wing on the opposite side of the lobby, where they can take meals while meeting the girls, or rent the private rooms there. The remaining buildings are for female customers only.”
“How many buildings do you have?” I wondered.
“Twelve in total.”
I’d had the impression it was a big place when I walked up to it, but if those buildings were the size of this enormous bath/natatorium, I had underestimated the total size by a wide degree.
Naturally, much of the establishment consisted of private spaces, but there were several other public bathing areas of various designs, resembling hot springs or fountains or a variety of other styles. I was finally happy when she led me into a building with many obstructions and dividers to break the baths into semi-private spaces.
This building had a hot-house design, with an elaborate glass roof held up by graceful, ornate fairy steel columns, so it was quite warm and humid. I suspected the designer had water fairies of the more southerly climates in mind, perhaps even for those from the southern continent, home to a massive rain forest similar to the Amazon basin.
If this was normal architecture for fairies, I was beginning to understand Mother’s ridiculously expensive taste in housing. Maybe it was just ordinary to her.
After my clothes, sword, belt and money went into another magically-secured locker, Laneia immediately snuggled up to me. But I was too revolted by the whole fairy-touched thing. Other than letting her lead me, I had already firmly rejected any further contact.
To me, the saddest thing was that, thanks to the mind-bending influence of the fairies, these girls were probably perfectly happy in their current lives. I had no doubt that they had once held totally different plans. This was not the life they had looked forward to. After becoming fairy-touched, a choice they never made for themselves, they were not much different than drug addicts forced into prostitution.
No, let’s be frank; that’s actually exactly what they were, except they were addicted to fairies. And while I’m sure that this place was doing what it could to cure them, the business had no incentive to be particularly quick about it. These girls were involuntarily dependent on the establishment that was exploiting them.
It made me feel ashamed of my fairy half. I had always seen my vampire side as the ‘bad half’, but my grandmother’s words, describing fairies as threats to mortals equal to monsters, were ringing in my ears now.
I would have left the “House of Gold Leaves” immediately upon learning the truth about the place. The only reason I had not become angry with the manager is that she had told me at the beginning that she herself was one of the fairy-touched for whom this place had provided salvation. The only reason I stayed was, if I tried to leave, the lesser fairies on stake-out outside would probably think I was trying to run away. I had no choice but to wait for Serera.
I chose a bath with slowly moving water which was fed by a fountain. It was a narrow channel deep enough to emerse in, with underwater seats and a deeper area meant for the legs which was wide enough for me to lie down in.
Laneia had shed her own clothing despite my repeated assurances I didn’t plan to purchase her ‘additional services’, so I let her wash my back. Once she had finished rinsing me and I had again dodged her advances, I descended the steps into the little pool.
It dawned on me at that moment that I needed to tell the girl something.
“Laneia, I told you I was a vampire, but that’s only half correct.”
She frowned for a moment, then she noticed what I meant. “Ah. You’re… what’s it called. A damp something?”
“You mean dhampir, and although close, technically, I’m not that either. My mother is a fairy, not a human.”
That surprised her. Well, yeah. Half fairies are as uncommon as fairies, because they can only be born to true fairy mothers, who rarely let themselves become pregnant. A lesser fairy’s child with a mortal is usually a mortal.
“Anyhow,” I continued, since she hadn’t responded, “My grandmother is a naiad, so my real reason for being here is to immerse for a while. Please don’t be alarmed when I don’t come up for air.”
I figured it would take more to convince her, but of course, she worked in a place with naiad customers. She understood what I meant immediately and just waited without panicking when I slipped underneath the surface and used Water mana to push myself to the bottom.
Grandmother had experienced quarter-naiad granddaughters before, so while she was teaching me, she was able to tell me these unknown cousins (and sisters?) of mine required several days of practice before their bodies became comfortable so the process could become autonomous.
The first time, the hardest part had been actually letting the air out of my lungs. I don’t literally breathe water into them; I just squeeze all the air out and close my windpipe, which is a really hard thing to make yourself do the first time! The rest is a process of the magical component of my body.
You see, technically, I am not breathing at all.
Grandmother had struggled at first to explain how ‘the wind in your body becomes tainted and must be renewed’ and how ‘even though fish breathe water, they are absorbing the wind that is in the water, so breathing requires Wind mana’.
But it didn’t take my Robert side’s high school biology and chemistry knowledge long to sort out what she was trying to explain. The carbon dioxide in my blood was the tainted wind, the oxygen is the renewed wind, and the dissolved oxygen in the water that fish gills can extract is the source of Wind mana that enables Grandmother to ‘breathe underwater’.
Which, as I said, she isn’t doing. She’s using Wind mana taken from the water to remove the carbon dioxide in her blood and replace it with oxygen. Which she does without pulling water into her lungs. If I had to guess where it is really happening, it’s through the surface of the skin.
The thing I have to practice is letting that naiad biological instinct take control and the instinct for using my lungs take a break. This was seriously difficult to do. It’s on the same level as what Tiana had to learn in order to make her back muscles and pecs drive her wings without moving her arms. (What was even harder was switching between the two so she could move wings and arms independently. By human anatomy, it makes no sense, and I don’t really know how to explain how it works.) In the exact same way, I was now having to make my brain switch between my lungs and my water-breathing.
But with the application of a little high school science knowledge, I had been able to master it easily (sort of) and in order to practice doing it instinctively, I started also practicing pulling mana from my blood core into my mana circulation and then putting it back. I became quicker with doing both actions, although pulling the mana into circulation was far faster than returning it.
I had managed nearly thirty minutes, and had already fully restored my body’s Water mana, when I messed something up and my lungs finally began protesting being short on oxygen. Rather than fixing the problem, I came up. Despite the fumble at the end, I was feeling quite good about myself…
…then my mood was immediately killed by the glares I was receiving from a pair of fairy knights in armor staring down at me.
