Aella teleported to just above the pool, preparing to jump in to save him, when she stopped short. A very well-endowed young woman was clinging to Jogug and glaring at her."He"s mine!" she snarled, wrapping her tentacles even tighter around him.
Aella backed away in confusion, as the two surfaced, even though Jogug didn"t seem to be having any trouble breathing under the water.
"You can have all of the men you want from all over the world, but this one is mine!" the woman snapped.
Aella tilted her head to the side, studying this new creature before her. She seemed to be like a normal demon from the waist up, almost human-like, but from the waist down she sprouted tentacles. Ten to be exact.
"What are you?" asked Aella.
"My people are Cecaelia, and I heard what you did to the great snake! He was a great Naga of my people!"
"How could you have worshipped that thing?" spat Precious, puffing up his fur and hissing.
"Was he a half person, like you are?" asked Aella curiously. He hadn"t seemed like he was a hybrid.
"No, but he was very smart and would chase away the sharks that liked to prey on our young," sniffed the woman.
"Pearl," huffed Jogug, tugging on the tentacle around his neck.
"Oh, sorry, dear!" gasped the woman, Pearl, loosening her tentacle before turning back to Aella. "This man is the only nice one I have ever found! All the other guys are jerks! You can go find yourself another one! And don"t even think of using your scent to steal mine!"
"She not want me," tried Jogug, but Pearl ignored him, jumping back into her tirade.
"Pearl," said Aella, holding up her hands to get her to pause. "I don"t want Jogug as my mate. You can have him, if he is willing. I didn"t realize the two of you were a pair."
"Pearl come for fish," said Jogug, pointing down at the pool they were still half submerged in.
"I did come to eat the fish," she admitted, looking guiltily at him. "But when I saw him, I forgot all about eating!"
"How did you hear I had killed your snake?" asked Aella, thinking about the distance from here to the location she had killed it. It hadn"t happened that long ago.
"Oh, well, my people are telepathic. If someone knows something big has happened, they share it with everyone else on the realm."
"How long have your people been here?" asked Aella, suddenly wondering when they had arrived.
"Not long. We came over here to this realm not quite a year ago when our Naga came. He was our protector, but now we have none. What are we going to do when the sharks start coming for our young?!"
Aella nodded to herself. The world tree must have been bringing people and creatures over to populate the realm from the moment the storms abated.
"I apologize for putting your young at risk, but the beast you call Naga tried to eat me. I only killed it out of self-defense."
"Then you must have done something to agitate him!" declared Pearl.
"No, I was swimming in the water, minding my own business," said Aella, not bothering to tell her that she was trying to keep her pheromones under control, which apparently, word of that had also spread across the realm.
"Oh," said Pearl, deflating as she thought about that. "I suppose he might have seen you as something to eat. You would have been the perfect size to swallow whole. The area over there was in turmoil for a while, with the birth of a new island. I guess you aren"t to blame for his death if it was in self-defense. I apologize for being so gruff with you. I had thought you a criminal who only wanted your own things and I didn"t want to lose my man too."
"Jogug, are you going to go live with her?" asked Aella, giving Pearl a nod of acknowledgement. It was safer to change the subject.
"Jogug will live with new mate. What Aella do with hydra baby?" asked Jogug, his hands stroking the tentacles that clung to him.
"I"m going to take them to the new city I just finished building, so they can play on the playgrounds. I need to make sure the area is safe before I have to babysit for someone," said Aella with as neutral a face as possible.
"If that"s decided," said Pearl, tugging on Jogug and starting to descend back underwater.
Jogug looked at Aella again, as if debating asking another question, but then merely waved and turned to follow Pearl.
"How does he breathe underwater?" asked Precious, settling down as the waves of their departure faded.
"I"ll find out later," shrugged Aella, turning to go check on Ruth, Louie and Frank.
The triplets were busy untangling themselves from a rope they had apparently been trying to sling up to Jogug"s room.
"What are you doing?" asked Aella, settling onto the ground next to them.
They all jumped and slowly turned their heads to look at her with guilty faces.
"It was Ruth"s idea!" declared Frank.
"No, it wasn"t!" demanded Ruth, snapping at him in anger.
"She said we could see what his room looked like while he was wrestling with the octo lady outside," added Louie, dodging as Ruth spat a little flame at him.
The ropes caught on fire and started burning quickly. Aella sighed as all three of them started to panic and damped the fire with the promise of feeding it the rope in a few moments. They settled down, trying to talk over each other about Ruth"s plan to hoist them up the rope to his room as she began unraveling the rope that was hopelessly entangled around them.
"It doesn"t matter what his room looks like," Aella finally said as she just started burning chunks of the rope. "Jogug is gone. He went to live with his new mate."
"Oh," they all said at the same time.
"Does that mean you won"t have a mate?" asked Ruth with wide eyes.
"I thought you brought him here to have as a mate?" asked Louie.
"Who did you have in mind for a mate, if it wasn"t him?" asked Frank.
"Guys, I"m not interested in getting a mate right now," said Aella, finally getting the last of the rope off of them, and then letting the fire finish eating it.
"Why not? Isn"t it the full moon?" asked Frank, craning his neck as if looking for a window to see the sky.
"Just because it is my time of heat, doesn"t mean I want a mate right now," said Aella, using her air to blow the ashes out the tunnel to the pool outside. "I"m going to redesign a few things, now that Jogug is gone, and then I"m going to take you to a new playground for a while. You"ll be alone, but I need you to promise not to leave the area. For one, the creatures outside of the town will eat you up in one bite, and for two, I have playmates coming to play with you in three weeks. They"re going to stay for a whole week, so you have to decide where they will sleep and eat and what you will play while they are here."
"Who is it?" asked Ruth, more than happy to change the subject.
"Do we know them?" asked Frank.
"What are their names?" asked Louie.
"They are the children of Joseph, a G.o.d from another realm," explained Aella, starting to get rid of the room she had made for Jogug.
"Wow, we get to play with G.o.dlings," whispered Frank.
"What kind of G.o.dlings are they?" asked Louie.
"Will they be nice?" asked Ruth.
"There"s a girl and two boys, just like you, so I want you to play nice. If they cause too much trouble, I"ll figure something else out," said Aella, moving towards the tunnel to get rid of the magical flame and the cooking area. The baby hydra didn"t need that.
"I"ll get to play with another girl!?" asked Ruth with glee, dancing after Aella and dragging her brothers along.
"I don"t remember their names, but I"m sure you will have plenty of fun. I designed lots of play areas into the new town just for you and them to have fun on," explained Aella as she also closed off the entrance to the pool for anything bigger than a fish the size of her hand. Adjusting the spikes to close off anything that might want to fly in that was bigger than a pigeon, she decided it was about as safe as she could make it.
"Time to go?" asked Ruth excitedly as the two boys looked over the new play area she had just made. There was even a slide for them to go into the swimming pool.
"Let"s go," nodded Aella, teleporting them to the town. Time to test things out.