Side-Story – Interludes: Volume Two – CH.142.5 – Tosh – After Meeting Renn, and the Feast

What a weird feeling.

I didn't feel different. Not a bit… yet everyone was claiming I had been lost in my own mind for years. Decades, even!

Such absurdity… I'd think they were all mad, but Vim himself was claiming the same thing.

And Vim was not a man to joke about such a thing. He'd tease, sure, but… never about something so serious.

But… although I felt fine, normal and whatnot, I was still doubting myself.

Because of Vim.

Even though I trusted his words, more than any other… I also found myself doubting him all the same.

Because this was not the Vim I knew.

"She's fine, but the others need to be tested still Renn…" Vim said softly.

The woman he was standing next to, over in the corner and trying to have a private conversation with, was someone I didn't really know. Someone I didn't really remember… at least, not as well as I should.

She had ears on top of her head. And a long, heavy looking, tail. I was actually used to seeing such traits on our people, but it wasn't often they looked so… perfect. She genuinely looked good with them, which was saying something. Usually people with such huge ears on top of their heads looked weird, as if they were deformed or something.

They fluttered as she frowned at Vim, in a way that only an annoyed woman could do. "But…" she whispered, upset over being told no.

"No buts, not even their nice ones," Vim said, smiling softly as he did.

While Renn's frown softened, morphing into an annoyed smirk, my own face got taken over by a frown.

He was… flirting!

So openly!

Glancing around, I felt a little on edge as I took in the few other people around me. Merit was off in one corner, sitting with Sofia. Gerald and Brandy were whispering about some iron-mine they were plotting around at another table. I had been sitting with Vim, and thus was now alone since he had stepped away to speak to Renn… but…

"Fine. I'll have dinner at their homes then," Renn then said with a huff, though she didn't sound too annoyed over it.

"Please do. Like I said, Lamp is fine but until the others officially are invited and accepted it's…" Vim started to again explain why she couldn't just invite a large group of random humans into our little enclave. He didn't get too far though since Renn made an odd sound, something akin to a scoff and a laugh. It made me flinch as I glanced back at them, even though I was trying so hard not to acknowledge or look at them.

Renn had reached over and lightly tapped Vim's chest. She did so with a smirk. "You just don't want to have to eat with us," she said, teasing him.

Vim's eyes narrowed at her, but not in a way that made sense. He looked… angry all of a sudden.

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Vim? Angry? Openly? With one of our members…?

If not for the fact that no one seemed to notice or care, and the one he was glaring actually made her smirk bigger upon receiving said glare I'd be getting up to try and save her life.

"Unlike you I can't just eat all day long. I don't have enough stomachs for it," Vim said.

"Obviously a you problem," Renn didn't hesitate to say in response.

"It is. Such a problem in fact I might need to complain," Vim agreed.

Renn began to giggle and I had to look away. I returned my attention to the cup I held, and I bit back a groan.

By the gods what was going on…?

Vim was not the emotionless man many thought him to be. He could joke around, and tease and whatnot… but he did not flirt. Not openly. Not with one of our own members.

And surely not in front of me, or anyone else.

Yet here he was…

Reaching up, I scratched at the side of my head. My recently cut hair made it feel itchy, but it wasn't the hair that itched… it was my brain. It was hurting all of a sudden.

I didn't get it. Not only was Vim acting out of character… he shouldn't be… right?

I mean, that was his wife!

Rennalee! Right!? Why did I find him flirting with his wife weird…?

It made no sense. If anything I should find it odd that I hadn't seen it, or witnessed it, more often! Of course he'd be like that with his wife, when you considered how he was with us… with his friends and comrades… Vim was actually a very gentle man, one capable of great insight and humor and…

"Don't come crying to me when she feeds me!"

I flinched as Renn shouted and ran off, making a few others glance at her as she did. She left the room in a hurry, uncaring of any who heard or saw her do so.

A predator being noisy was normal. And in fact, one like her being so… boisterously emotional, was also normal. But by the gods dead and alive I just couldn't wrap my head around who it was she was doing such things with.

Vim sighed, rather softly, and I dared a glance over my shoulder to him. The protector looked suddenly bored, as if no longer having anything worth paying attention to, as he stepped back my way. To return to sitting with me, as to likely resume our earlier conversation. The one we'd been having before his wife had barged in to ask for permission to let some lamp have dinner with us.

What had we even been talking about…? I couldn't remember now. All I could think of was the absurdity that had just occurred, and the way my mind seemingly wasn't able to comprehend it.

Vim having a partner shouldn't be odd. Even if it was. Yet it made me question my own sanity.

Vim flirting with said partner was also something that should just… make sense. It was what you did with said people, after all. Yet it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Said partner being someone as cute as her…? Rennalee was adorable, utterly so. Enough so to make me a little jealous. So that too should be understandable… but…

"You okay, Tosh?" Vim asked as he took a seat back at my table. He sat across from me this time, instead of next to me. Maybe so he could keep an eye on the door his wife had just ran off through.

"Yeah… how about you…?" I asked carefully.

"Hm?" Vim tilted his head at me in a familiar way. One that relieved me. I'd seen that look hundreds, if not thousands, of times. That was the look of a man wondering why I'd even ask such a question. That was the look of the protector, a man basically immortal, wondering why I'd even ask for his health.

"She uh… wants to have dinner? Why don't you just eat with her?" I asked, still doing my best to navigate the oddity of my mind.

Maybe something really was wrong with me. Why'd I find his actions, his wife, so weird? It made no sense at all… haven't they been together for hundreds of years already?

"Because she can't speak their language. So I get stuck as translator, and trust me it's not fun to be stuck between them," Vim said.

I felt a smirk crawl its way onto my face. "I'd argue otherwise, typically," I said. Being the interpreter for a bunch of beautiful women? What was there to complain about?

"Then you go do it," Vim said simply.

"Maybe I will!"

Maybe doing so would get me to calm down and figure out why I found Renn, and her relationship with Vim so strange.

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