Lavender awakes in a clearing in an ancient forest, the redwoods soaring high above her head, dappled light falling from the canopy around her. She's in bed — a huge, heart-shaped bed, deep purple. And she is being held on both sides: her Annabelle, and her Marigold.

  Marigold is dusky-skinned, with a pattern of light scales on her cheeks and stubby horns protruding from her forehead. A reptilian tail snakes out from her hips and ys across Lavender’s legs. She wears a deep bck one-piece dress, expertly tailored to her part-dragon form, and no shoes or socks.

  Annabelle's dusky wings embrace her from behind, wrapped over both her and Marigold. Her feathers are so, so soft, perfect for a bnket, and her sweater-cd body presses into Lavender from behind, her breath washing over her neck.

  Lavender can't see her own body too easily, but she can feel Annabelle pressed against her fox tail, and the bird-cries and sounds of soft water that drift through the forest feel unusually clear. There's also a notable absence of something between her legs that she'd long grown used to — but the ck of it comes as a distinct relief.

  It really worked, then. It really worked.

  She kisses Marigold's forehead. "Wake up, sleepyhead," she says softly. "It's the first day of the rest of our lives."

  Marigold blinks open her eyes, yawns, and stretches, squirming against Lavender's front in a decidedly interesting fashion.

  "G’morning, Avie," she says softly. "Mmm. Good morning."

  Annabelle stirs as well, tightening her wings a little around Lavender and Marigold; her lips press against Lavender's neck, and then she speaks. "Morning, loves. So gd we're all here."

  Lavender rolls over onto her back, and now she can see Annabelle's face. It's a familiar one from a dozen VRMMOs, her skin a medium brown, her face cutely freckled and her eyes a deep hazel. It feels right.

  "Yeah," Lavender says. "It was a risk, transferring in this early, so..." She ducks her head, and smiles. "So gd to see you all."

  "Do you wanna get up?" Marigold asks. "Or would you prefer to stay in bed?" She waggles her eyebrows and kisses Lavender's shoulder, a smile on her lips.

  "I think I want to get up. We have a whole world to customize, and you know I've always been a sucker for interior design." Lavender stretches, and sits up. She's wearing a deep purple top with a pattern of grapevines, a medi skirt with a pattern of butterflies, and matching purple socks.

  "Sounds good to me," Annabelle says. "I do want to test out our new parts, just to make sure after the transfer, but I don't expect it to be much different from in brain-tethered VR or I Would Have Heard About It. The customization, though... Well, it just feels a little awkward to call a forest clearing a real home. I might have fae sympathies, but even I don't want to just live outdoors. We need a house."

  "Coming right up." Lavender sits up in bed, and the translucent outline of a standard house model comes up at the side of the clearing. The one she's selected is her favorite neo-Victorian preset, with a rge window seat enclosed in gss on three sides near the front of the house, and rose-vines climbing up the exterior walls, heavy with red blossoms. "On the side away from the water or the side near the water? Or are we going to tear away the redwoods and do custom ndscape? Nothing more permanent than a temporary solution..."

  "I want it by the water," Annabelle says. "That's more convenient for sailing up and downriver to other pces, and it'll give us a nice pebble beach in our backyard. Facing the clearing, of course, with the water at the back."

  "Mari, is that cool with you?"

  Marigold nods. "Yeah. I like the idea of having the river close."

  "Far be it for me to overrule the pair of you, then. We'll have to do some custom terrain sculpting, but the autoadjust should handle it gracefully enough..." Lavender plops the house down on the side of the clearing nearest the sound of water, and the redwood forest parts to make way for the house, creating an artificial rise for the foundation to settle into squarely. "Should I let it auto-garden?"

  Marigold frowns. "It'll be a pain to get it to keep the redwoods in the right ways. I think no."

  "Yeah, seconded. And we have higher priorities, like the interior." Annabelle unwraps her wings from around Lavender and wriggles over to the edge of the bed. "Let's go see it together, shall we?"

  "Alright," Lavender says, and she slips out of bed too. Her simple brown fts with the buckles are by the foot of the bed; she slips them on and steps out onto the ground.

  It’s a short walk to the house, with auto-generated steps up from the forest floor to the doorway: she unlocks it with a touch, and steps inside, trailed by Annabelle and Marigold.

  Inside, the house is one big empty space, two floors tall and four rooms deep. There aren’t even any interior load bearing walls: after all, such things are unnecessary in virtuality.

  “Alright,” Lavender says. “How should we divide this up? Any suggestions?”

  “I want a lounge area in the front,” Annabelle says. “The kitchen should be off to the side instead of dominating, so Marigold doesn’t have to see and interact with food all the time. Do you want to sleep with me, or Marigold, or both of us…?”

  Marigold speaks up. “I’d be more comfortable having my own private room, even if I come and hug you girls sometimes as well. If Annabelle wants to sleep with you I don’t mind, Avie, just so long as you remember you’re mine.” Her smile is nothing but pure bright sunniness.

  Lavender shivers a little, and touches her wedding band with her thumb. She feels… reminded of her pce. Which is a complex emotion. More good than bad, though, she thinks.

  “Alright,” Lavender says. “I think the personal rooms should go on the second floor and the entertaining rooms should go on the first floor. Lounge for most of the first floor space, maybe with a guest bedroom for privacy to boink, a small kitchen, library. Then the second floor should have a den for people to hang out and py games in and a master bedroom for me and Annabelle and a private bedroom for Marigold.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Annabelle says. “I might recommend a study of some form for you to write and color in? Or for me to do crafts? And if you wanted to install a magic mod a ritual room might not go amiss. But it’s all up to you.”

  “I think you’re not thinking big enough,” Marigold says. “How about a conservatory? A private pool? A gallery of artworks dedicated to us? A dueling ring? Surely you’re going to put in a proper dungeon, right?”

  Lavender runs a hand through her hair. “I think a pool would be nice. A conservatory, maybe. The trouble is nobody actually pys any instruments. But perhaps an indoor greenhouse? And yes, of course I’m going to put in a dungeon too, it just isn’t my first priority. The lounge serves most of the same purpose, you know? As for the study, I was thinking the library would serve that purpose. And as for a ritual room… well, maybe. I’d have to decide on the magic mod. But I can set some space aside.”

  “I bow to your superior architecture nerdery,” Annabelle says. “Just walk us through it as we do it and we can maybe make suggestions or tweaks.”

  Marigold simply nods.

  “Alright then,” Lavender says. “Here goes nothing. Partition… no need for a foyer… so the first block is the lounge.” She paces out a rge square block to take about half the size of the first floor, then pauses. “Do we want the window seat in the lounge or the library? Do we expect we’ll mostly fuck on it or mostly read on it?”

  “Mostly read on it, surely,” Annabelle says.

  “Maybe. Or you could install floor cushions to kneel on and make it a lovely pce to give and receive oral.” Marigold raises an eyebrow.

  “Hmm. One vote library, one vote sex. I feel shy about fucking literally in the front window of the house, but it is a private world, we can lock the settings… I think I like Marigold’s idea. So let’s make it an in-between pce.” Lavender selects a few options in her interface, and a small nook forms encompassing the window box, with a folding screen set up to shield it from the lounge but a doorway out into what will be the library on the other side of the screen. “There we go. We could also do a hanging curtain rather than a folding screen, that might be more practical…”

  “I think a hanging silk curtain would be more the lounge aesthetic, yes.” Annabelle runs a hand through Lavender’s hair, and Lavender shivers as she feels her sensitive ears be gently, tenderly scritched.

  It feels good, soft warm pleasure that makes her want to curl up and rest… but she’s trying to focus, damn it! “Alright,” she says, nudging Annabelle’s hand aside, and repces the folding screen with a heavy silk curtain on a track, able to be pushed aside or let down to fill the archway. “There we go.”

  “Go on,” Marigold says. “The lounge or the library next?”

  “The library is probably a very rge project due to spawning in all the books in an order we like,” Lavender says. “Let’s skip it for now and do the lounge.” She extends the wall a little. “I think we put in the kitchen in the section at the back of the lounge and put in a door that closes, maybe with some gss in it, so it can be isoted from the lounge.”

  “Are you sure about that? Opening and closing that door all day could get annoying…” Annabelle preens her wing casually with one hand as she considers. “Another curtain maybe?”

  Lavender considers, then nods. “Yeah. Another curtain makes good sense. It keeps to the theme, and it’s mostly important to screen off the visual, I think, rather than the sound.” She looks over at Marigold. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” Marigold says. “If you put in a good coffee machine I might even set foot in the kitchen deliberately. Leave it for st, though. You can do it with Annabelle tomorrow morning while I sleep in.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Lavender says, and makes the wall and its curtain but leaves the room beyond unfurnished. “So that leaves us with most of this space for the lounge, but we want to fit in that guest bedroom. I think I want to widen the house - we’ll need to redo the exterior a little to make it look nice, but no reason not to have space for everything. Guest bedroom, and… A pool? No, I think I want to do that as a ‘natural’ feature outside. That greenhouse wing…? I feel like I want that to be gss on three sides, not only two. It could extend further, but then the house has a very funky shape…”

  “I think you should just dispense with the guest bedroom idea,” Annabelle advises. “Anyone who wants to have sex in your house should be someone you’re comfortable enough to invite up to the master bedroom or down to the dungeon. You could put in dungeon ‘cells’ downstairs if you needed to, but I don’t particurly think you should be turning the house into a club. Just do what you want.”

  Lavender nods. “Okay. Then I want a conservatory on the west side, all gss, with pnts inside and a walkout into the gardens.”

  “Do it, then.” Marigold crosses her arms and gives Lavender a challenging look.

  Lavender does. Setting her wall type to ‘gss’, she sketches out a framework of gss panels that swathe the western half of the house, producing a conservatory that lets in the sun. She shrouds it off with another heavy curtain of silk across an archway, then takes a deep breath. “Okay. Pnts. Any specific ones you’d like?”

  “Dahlias,” Annabelle suggests. “And perhaps some cosmos, as well.”

  “Amaranth,” Marigold says. “It seems only appropriate to honor our hosts. And amaryllis, to go alongside.”

  “I think that’s enough flowers,” Lavender says. “Now to fill the pnters… The amaranth by the sides of the room, it’s tall and will provide some privacy or at least some intrigue… Amaryllis and dahlias in pots, I think… And a pnter of cosmos through the center of the room.”

  She flicks with her fingers at the interface as she speaks, quickly arranging the room just so. “And I think it could use a water feature. Perhaps a small fountain.” She picks out one she recalled from a Japanese restaurant she visited in VR and pces it, and the stone floor rises up to take the form of several leaping koi fish, water spilling from their mouths to the basin below as they arc through the air.

  Lavender considers her work, then nods. “It’ll do for a rough cut, with the edge of the fountain as seating. We can come back ter to detail it.” She looks back over her shoulder at the lounge. “Right. The lounge.”

  She doubles back through the archway, pushing the silk curtain aside, and stands in the middle of the empty room, the bare hardwood floor somehow accusing.

  “Alright, I want this to be fun to tackle people on, so let’s do plush-wood flooring with a fall baffle, and then we can carve a dish out of that for a seating area in the middle, and put in a few hardpoints under the pillows. Maybe do the old ‘ornamental pnt dangling from a surprisingly-strong ceiling hook’ trick.” She taps her lips thoughtfully, and taps in the flooring change, and it becomes something closer to a gym mat in texture and springiness while retaining its hardwood-like appearance.

  “I don’t see why you’re working so hard to make this conceable,” Marigold says. “It’s not like anyone you’d actually invite over would be at all unaware you’re kinky.”

  “There is my mother to consider though —” Lavender starts.

  “Fuck your mother. You’re almost thirty. It’s your house. Do what you want with it.” The words come out harsh and hard from Marigold’s mouth, her distaste beyond clear. “She’s been trying to run your life forever. That doesn’t mean you have to let her.”

  Annabelle nods firmly. “She can adapt or get banned. It’s that simple. You’re not dependent on her and you’re not her bitch, to be frank.”

  Lavender takes a breath, about to make a sharp comment, then deliberately exhales and nods. “Yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t be trying to pass for normal even now. It’s my world.”

  Annabelle pats Lavender on the back gently. “I know. It’s hard. But we’re getting there, together.”

  “Yeah.” Lavender manages a smile. “Okay, so if my mother’s not invited… what about my sister?”

  “I mean, you did discover that her profile name on discord was ‘Nymphet’, I think her power level is higher than you would guess. She’s always been cool before, right?” Annabelle raises an eyebrow.

  Lavender smiles and nods. “Yeah. I guess I can trust her not to rat me out.”

  “So that brings us to random houseguests you might want to invite over.” Annabelle spreads her hands. “Not many of those who you wouldn’t be cool with knowing you have kinky sex, now, are there?”

  Lavender considers her acquaintances — half of whom she’s fucked at some point or another — and after a moment concludes that she’s pretty sure they’re okay. “Yeah, you’ve got me there. I still want it to be conceable just for peace of mind, but I’m okay if in practice it’s basically never concealed.”

  “Alright,” Annabelle says. “If it’d help your anxiety.”

  Lavender smiles, and gives Annabelle a soft hug. “You’re such a good girlfriend,” she says softly. “Thank you.”

  Annabelle trails a hand through Lavender’s hair, and then Marigold coughs quietly and the two pull apart.

  “Right,” Lavender says. “Hardpoints. And pillows. And a recessed seating area. Here we go.”

  Quickly, she installs a circur seating area lined with pillows all the way through, and suspends a small gss chandelier above it from a newly-installed second floor ceiling. The hook for the chandelier is heavy, and so too are the hardpoints she adds along the rim of the bowl, hidden beneath the pillows.

  “There we go,” she says. “A decent first attempt. Now where do we put the stairs to the second floor?”

  “How about a spiral staircase by the conservatory wall?” Marigold suggests.

  “That makes good sense,” Lavender says. “Let it be so.” And she settles it into pce, an elegant brass-banistered corkscrew up to the second floor. “Now, let us ascend — Marigold, I’ll set aside your space and give you permissions for it, don’t do anything too crazy but you have free reign.” She cmbers up the spiral staircase and steps out onto the newly-made second floor.

  Marigold and Annabelle follow, and Lavender designates a two-room area as Marigold’s apartments, while setting aside the remaining two rooms for the master bedroom and a study.

  The master bedroom gets a new double bed, marked clearly as her body’s respawn point — a feature she pns to make heavy use of — and then all her personal possessions. Marigold’s favorite blue dragon, by the name of Heartkin for the heart she grasps in her talons, given to her many years ago in actuality and now a copy of which is hers forever in virtuality. Duskwing, the pigeon plushie Annabel sent her so many years ago. Her favorite books — the Slow Regard of Silent Things, Piranesi, and many, many pieces of professionally bound web fiction and fanfiction — and her weighted bnket. The quilt her grandmother made for her before she passed. Transference had come too te for her.

  Her ruby-headed staff from Terra Defenders, where she’d made a name for herself as a mage and then a healer. A record pyer for her favorite music. Her Lumi, a glowing ball of light that serves her as both mp and companion, right now quiescent with a soft pink thrum.

  Annabelle brings things too. Her own weighted bnket. Her ptop, for reading in bed. A handful of sweet candy hearts that never runs out, an old vice of hers. Her shadowbde, again from Terra Defenders.

  “It’s a start,” Lavender says.

  “Yeah,” Annabelle says. “It really is.” She steps in, and gently enfolds Lavender in her wings and kisses her.

  They sway together for a long moment, their bodies moving in harmony, and Lavender sighs.

  “... I want to celebrate,” she says. “But we’re kind of in the middle of something.”

  “We could stop being in the middle of something,” Annabelle suggests. She brushes a strand of hair out of Lavender’s eyes.

  “... I’ll telepath Marigold.”

  Dearest? I’m jumping Annabelle’s bones. Hope you don’t mind.

  She gets back a mental chuckle. Have fun, dearest wife. It’s none of my concern what you do in your spare time, and this room will take a while to get perfect.

  Thank you.

  You should thank me. A sly smile comes across the link. Now go get to it.

  Yes, Ma’am. ?

  Lavender kisses Annabelle softly, and smiles. “She says go ahead.”

  In reply, Annabelle sweeps Lavender up into her arms, as easily as she were lifting a sack of potatoes, and tumbles her onto the bed beneath her, her thigh pressing in between Lavender’s legs.

  “Then let’s break things in.” Annabelle’s hand slips between Lavender’s legs and gently strokes her. “Like you.”

  Lavender flushes as soft pleasure fres across her folds. She had requested that her body be remade a virgin again…

  “Alright,” she says. “Since it’s you.”

  “Always.”