Alexa and Estie marched north under the darkening sky, towards the logomancy building that would free the latter from her sexual curse. Alexa was in no mood to talk, and Estie seemed to have picked up the hint. The shorter woman’s arms were wrapped around her body, her eyes were glued to the ground, and she was walking quietly a pace and a half behind.

A momentary pang of guilt flashed across Alexa’s heart when she glanced back and saw her study partner following her looking so hangdog, but she brushed it away. She’s the one who jerked me around! I’m just standing up for myself. She should feel bad about what she did.

Although they passed the occasional student, it was the middle of the hour and most people were in class, not ambling across campus. Especially when other people were nearby, Alexa kept an eye out for any hidey-holes that they might be able duck into if lust suddenly overcame Estie. She’d pushed her boundaries on public intercourse more in the past couple hours than she ever thought she could, but she certainly wasn’t ready to get her classmate off in full view of everyone.

They were in the oldest section of campus now, making their way past imposing stone-hewn buildings built to evoke the power and prestige of battlemage keeps of old. Their rooftop crenellations and ornately carved ornamentation cut an odd contrast with the colorful flyers pinned on the billboard out front and the modern classrooms visible inside. Doublejuice Hall, their destination, was among these. Alexa started quickening her pace, anxious to reach it before—

“Oh, Alexa!” a singsong voice called out from behind them. Alexa winced. She didn’t have time for this normally, and she certainly didn’t right now.

She reluctantly turned around to see a familiar face trotting up the path after them as quick as her heels would carry her, wearing a lily-print dress that perfectly matched her long white-blonde hair but was just half a step too formal for late afternoon on a university campus. “Listen, Susantha, we don’t—”

“Oh, Alexa, dear, please, we’re friends! I’ve told you a thousand times, call me Susy!”

Susantha Hosewater was not so much Alexa’s friend as Alexa was hers, and that more by sheer determination than any real companionship. She saw college as a chance to make connections and build a network she could tap into in her future career as a high-powered executive or lexomancer, and ever since she’d cornered a shy Alexa at one of their dormitory movie nights, she’d considered them fast friends. Alexa had often considered confiding in Susantha about her shortcomings in potioncraft just to convince her that she wasn’t worth the effort of networking, but then what if she decided to take her on as a “project”? The thought was unbearable.

“Susy, yeah, hi… I’m sorry but we really—”

“And who is your charmingly bedraggled companion?” Susantha interrupted, holding out her hand to Estie, palm-down.

“This is my, uh… this is Estie. Estaline. She’s in my Potioncrafting 131 lab.”

For a moment, no one said anything. Estie ignored Susantha’s proffered hand and indeed her entire overture and shot an imploring look at Alexa. Susantha let her hand drop and made a show of smoothing her dress in an awkward attempt to recover from the snub. Alexa just stood there, rooted to the ground, desperately trying to think up an excuse to break off this conversation before Estie lost control and fell all over another woman. Her heart could only break into so many pieces.

Finally, Susantha cleared her throat and said, “Yes, well, positively delighted to meet you. I’m sure on a good day you’re just as sociable as our sweet Alexabeth. But I must confess my curiosity as to what brings the two of you here on this cloudy afternoon! Unless I’m terribly mistaken, the potions building is quite on the other side of campus.”

“W-we’re… just hanging out,” Alexa replied. “But we really need to leave…”

“Oh, what a mystery. Just hanging out, but in such a rush! I wonder, do you have an event you’re hurrying off to? Some sort of soirée–” She made sure to use the Rioche pronunciation. “–I somehow haven’t heard of?”

“I-it’s nothing like that! I don’t even g-get invited to things like that…”

Susantha laughed. “Oh, of course not! Silly of me to suggest. But we’ll just have to remedy that at some point, won’t we, dear? We can’t just leave such a sweet, lovely girl as yourself out in the cold while all your friends are meeting one another and enjoying themselves?”

Alexa doubted whether her friends were the sort who showed up to “soirées” in the first place. Estie began rubbing her thighs together.

“Uh, th-thanks, but we really ha—”

Alexa was interrupted by a yelp from Susantha.

“Oh, it’s raining! No, no, the forecast didn’t call for this… oh, and I wore my suede shoes today!”

“Y-yeah, we’d better get going to stay dry!” Alexa said, privately thanking the Mother profusely for her intervention. “I’m sure we’re going in different directions.”

“Oh, my dear, I would have joined you two on your stroll but I’m afraid my Bouloutins demand I stay dry. But you simply must come to my salon next Thursday! I have rented out the opera hall’s private room and all the luminaries of our cohort will be in attendance. And bring darling Estie as well!”

“Um, sure, Susanth— Susy.”

“Fabulous! Doors open at seven, wear a dress! Ta ta!”

As Susantha walked to the nearest doorway as quickly as elegance would allow, Estie grabbed Alexa’s arm.

“It’s building. It’s not here yet, but… I can feel it.”

Alexa groaned. She was still in no mood to fuck a girl to whom she meant nothing, just another good lay and no more. But if that’s what was happening, there was nothing else for it. She made this mess, and it was hers to clean up.

“All right. Come.” Estie gasped and clenched her thighs. “I mean, follow.”

Alexa hustled her study partner down the path as the heavy raindrops grew more frequent, desperately looking around for a secluded and dry place to duck into. Before too long, she found her mark: a small wooden gardener’s shack, nestled against the shrubbery on one end of a large lawn. She pulled Estie inside just as the rain started to pour down in earnest.

The shack wasn’t large, but it was certainly bigger than the potions building’s supply closet. Various gardening tools were neatly hung along the wall or stored in buckets underneath a small, neat, work desk.

“All right, same as before. Skirt off, against the wall.” She clasped her hands together and began to work her spell.

Estie let out a little moan and her hands twitched, but she didn’t move. “Wait…”

“I just want to get this over with.”

“Alexa. Hold on. Not yet.”

“What?” Alexa snapped, allowing herself the dubious pleasure of nastiness.

“I… don’t like it when you’re mad at me.”

Alexa didn’t meet her eyes. “And I don’t like it when my crush says she likes me and another woman in the space of one hour, and I don’t like that I have to get her off regardless, but we all live with the consequences of our own actions.”

“I didn’t!”

Alexa turned away to hide her brimming eyes, only to be betrayed by the crack in her voice. “Oh Manda, I’m so glad I got to feel you up! Oh Manda, I’ll call you!”

“Stop it!” Estie yelled, and the shock of an emotion other than lust breaking through her normally imperturbable calm managed to shut Alexa up.

“I don’t owe you anything! I can flirt with whoever I want. Crone’s shriveled tits, I can even fuck whoever I want! We’re not dating.” She looked her friend dead in the eye. “You didn’t even have the guts to ask me out.”

She knew even as she was saying the words that they were a mistake. They felt too weighty, too powerful, and she tasted poison on her lips as she spoke. Alexa stared at her, the shock in her eyes giving way to a deep pain, and then rushed out the door of the little shed.

Estie sunk to the ground, her head in her hands, the burning need between her thighs temporarily drowned by the despair in her heart. Once again, she’d lost control and let the venom in her words kill a friendship,  one that looked like it was going to become more. Once again, as soon as she’d started to really care about and understand someone, she used that understanding to mix just enough truth with just enough falsehood, brewing a potion that only ever had one effect.

She just wanted to curl up right there on the floor and allow Alexa’s misbrewed aphrodisiac to drain her of whatever life force she had left. It would be a poetic end: killed by a toxic love potion because she allowed herself to deliver her own kind of toxin to someone she’d have grown to love.

Estie heaved a huge sigh. As much as she wanted to wallow in melancholy, she was pragmatic to her core, so it could never keep hold of her for long. Without Alexa helping her out, there was no way she’d be able to keep herself together enough to make the counterdraught. She’d just have to swallow her shame and go to the university medical center, which (Mother’s mercy) was only a few buildings away. She’d keep Alexa out of trouble by saying she’d dosed herself. She doubted this would be anywhere near the strangest sexual mishap the medical staff had seen.

She heaved herself off the floor. She knew she should just rub one out here in the privacy of the shed, that her sorrow would lose the battle with her libido sooner rather than later, but she just couldn’t bring herself to. Even the thought of shoving her hand down her pants made her think of Alexa, and she couldn’t bear that right now. Besides, whether she bought herself a bit more time or not, there was no way she wouldn’t end up naked in the medical office with a hand up her cunt—someone else’s, if she got unlucky. She sighed again, opened the door, and stepped out into the now-pouring rain.

Next to the door, sitting on the ground with her face in her hands, was Alexa.

“I… thought you’d left,” Estie said.

Alexa looked up at her. She was starting to get so wet that even her thick curls looked bedraggled, and with the rain pounding against her face Estie couldn’t tell whether she’d been crying.

“What? No, I just… I needed some air.” She looked away. “I’m not gonna abandon you. I fucked up, I’m going to fix it.”

Estie sat down beside her, resigning herself to a damp and muddy skirt.

“Alexa… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you were right,” Alexa replied, “I’m a coward. I tried to magic you into loving me, and I ruined it in every possible way. You saw through me immediately, I put you in danger, and at the end of it all you don’t even like me!” She laughed bitterly.

“No! That’s not true. Alexa, listen to me.”

Estie grabbed her friend’s hand and immediately gasped at the contact, her eyes going glassy and her other hand drifting towards her crotch. But just before she lost herself to pleasure, she bit down hard on her tongue, wincing as the pain brought her back to reality.

“Think about this for a moment without beating yourself up. I didn’t ask you out either! I had just as many opportunities as you did, but I just chose to flirt instead and hope you’d take the risk of asking me out so I wouldn’t have to. So who’s really got guts, huh? The one who did nothing or the one who actually made a move?”

Alexa stared at Estie, her face so full of such tightly-guarded emotions as to be totally unreadable, and said nothing.

“I was just being a bitch to you because… because I hated that you thought Mandanita meant as much to me as you do. Yeah, she’s hot, but she’s a stranger! I haven’t spent all semester getting to know her, trying to flirt with her, admiring her… beautiful… soft skin…”

Estie began to stroke Alexa’s palm with her thumb, slowly pulling the hand closer to her body. Alexa felt it radiating heat and couldn’t bring herself to pull back.

But Estie could. With a shake of her head, she released Alexa’s hand and stood up, turning away from her friend.

“Look, Alexa I… like you.” She ran her hands through her long straight hair, as much to keep them from feeling herself up as to get the rain out. “Ugh, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a school kid. I have a cronedamn crush on you.”

“You’re…” Alexa’s face twisted and she barely managed to choke out, “...you’re just telling me what I want to hear.”

“How dare you?!” Estie shouted, whirling to face Alexa again. “I open my heart to you and you tell me I’m lying? I don’t make a habit of garnishing the truth, Alexa, and I would never lie to you. Whether you believe it or not, I don’t even care anymore, I wanted to date you!”

“Then why,” Alexa wailed, “did you flirt with her?”

Estie threw her hands in the air. “I’m not usually monogamous! And I know I didn’t express this well before, but it’s not like we’d talked about being exclusive. Besides, you did slip me a potion of ‘fuck everything that moves’.” Estie shuddered, clenched her fists so hard her nails dug visibly into her palms, and continued. “I guess I sort of took that as an indication.”

Alexa sniffled and looked at the ground. “Well… I am. Monogamous. I m-mean, I always have been.”

“And I’d be willing to try that,” Estie said, “If… if we did date. If you still want that.”

Suddenly, Alexa was on her feet and Estie found herself engulfed in a big wet hug from the taller girl.

“I’m sorry I overreacted! Of course I want to date you!”

Estie used the last of her fortitude to pull Alexa back through the door and into the shed before the force of Alexa’s soft breasts pressing directly into her face ripped her mind from her like a flag in gale-force winds. She let out a blissful moan, surrendering to her lust at last and allowing her hands free rein to frantically pull Alexa’s soaked shirt off.

They tumbled together onto the floor of the gardener’s shack, its protection from the rain no longer relevant to the two drenched women but its protection from prying eyes crucial as Estie rubbed her face on Alexa’s soft, bare chest and moaned in release. She reveled in both the physical sensation of skin against skin and the lightness of her heart. Lost in her horny fog, her hands already pulling Alexa’s shirt roughly off her hips, she no longer remembered what had been weighing on her, but she was thrilled to celebrate the weight lifting.

In what she considered a commendable display of logic for someone who hadn’t had an orgasm in almost fifteen minutes, Estie decided that the best place for such a celebration was between Alexa’s legs. She licked both of the lovely tits that had been such wonderful hosts goodbye, then lazily drew her tongue down to her lover’s tantalizing bush and the richly-scented treasure hidden within. Although most of Estie’s memories of the day were hazy at the moment, she remembered this and was dying for more.

Alexa helpfully spread her legs and Estie dived in with gusto. If the feeling of her face against her study partner’s breasts had been bliss, the feeling of her tongue on her cunt was transcendent. Her whole mouth felt like an erogenous zone, and she shuddered as she ran her tongue between Alexa’s labia and around her vagina. With sensations like this, Estie barely even needed her middle and ring finger deep inside her own pussy, pushing against her best spot as the heel of her hand ground against her clit—although of course she wasn’t going to stop.

Estie wondered where Alexa’s best spot was and decided to try to find it, pushing her long tongue deep into her friend and immediately drawing out a gratifying moan. She tried curling her tongue, now a little deeper, now a little shallower, enjoying the sensation of her lips playing along Alexa’s labia and the sound of her rapid breaths. Then she turned her tongue a little to the right and Alexa let out a yell of unmistakable pleasure as her pussy clenched around Estie’s tongue, giving her a burst of pleasure in turn.

Estie brought her unoccupied hand up to play with Alexa’s clit as she pulled her tongue back a bit, marveling at how soft and smooth her lover’s pussy was. Then she thrust it back into just the same spot, a little to the right, and was rewarded by another yell and another contraction that felt so good on her tongue it made her head spin. She repeated this, losing herself further and further in the pure sensation of it, until finally one of Alexa’s yells was louder and longer and her cunt wrapped itself even tighter around Estie’s greedy tongue.

The sound of her friend in ecstasy, and the sensation of that ecstasy on her tongue, was enough to push Estie over the edge as well. She sent her fingers as deep inside herself as her tongue was in Alexa and felt her whole body clench in two thunderous waves of pleasure, one from her mouth and one from her pussy. Even after those had passed, aftershock after aftershock rolled through her, and it was all she could do to just stay conscious and experience them.

Slowly, the waves of pleasure faded, and in their wake Estie’s full faculties began to return to her. She was exhausted and spent. She was definitely spending more of her energy than she could easily afford keeping up with the demands of Alexa’s potion, but she found it hard to be concerned about it when the experiences she was buying were so sweet. Now that they’d actually talked about dating, she felt at ease in a way she hadn’t in a long time. She felt comfortable. She felt… warm?

She sat up and looked towards Alexa. “You’re… glowing.”

“Yeah!” Alexa replied brightly, both in tone and in the warm luminescence her whole body was currently radiating. “It’s just a normal warmth charm like you’d use on a hot water bottle or a box of take-out, but I realized when I was a kid I could use it on myself to dry off real quick after a shower.”

“Mm, I knew you were hot,” Estie said with a grin, snuggling up next to her—”So, wait. Are we dating now?”

“Yeah! I mean, if you still want to..?”

“Of course I do! I just… I’m not sure what I should call you. What are your feelings on terminology?”

“Crone, you really do just talk like that all the time, huh?” Alexa laughed. “I want to be your girlfriend.”

Estie smiled and nestled her head into the bare crook of Alexa’s warm, glowing shoulder. “Then girlfriends we shall be.”