"...and they lived happily ever after," mommy said as she closed the book. "Sweet dreams, my lovely."

"Aw, mommy," Sillia protested, "I'm not tired! Can't you read another story?"

"Now now, lovely. It's getting late," mommy smiled as her eyes glowed.

Sillia sighed happily. Like every naga her age she knew, she felt warm and safe sinking into mommy's eyes. Gently, mommy put her to sleep, and she curled up on her (water-inflated, electrically heated) bed.

She was soon fast asleep, and thus did not hear the conversation between mommy and her other mommy (not that she thought of either one as the "other").

"Don't you think she's a bit old to be hypnotized to sleep?"

"Old? Tasty, she's five. That's hardly old."

(Aside from relying on self-heating beds due to being ectothermic, nagas also didn't really use "sweetie" or "honey" as terms of endearment - their diet meant they had never evolved to love sweet tastes.)

"When I was that age, I was already going to bed without. And I've been reading Doctor Sunak's latest," she held up an advice book for child-rearing, "and it says parents should hypnotize their children as little as possible past the age of four, in order to encourage their mental growth."

"Tasty, that's bullcrap," mommy replied with affectionate amusement. "Ask five experts what the right amount of hypnosis to use on your kids is, you'll be lucky to only get six answers. My parents were still dazing me practically every other day when I was ten, and that never exactly kept me from finishing college!"

"Maybe? I don't know. It's... I want what's best for her, you know?"

"We both do, dear. Maybe what she needs is for her mothers to relax a little?"

"God yes. Your turn?"

"You better believe soooooooohmmmmm..." Mommy trailed off as she sank into other mommy's eyes, who coiled around her and lovingly carried her to the adult bedroom.

"You wouldn't believe the day I've had at the office," said one of Sillia's mothers. "You know that stupid argument Cal and Zwer have been having - you know, about whether you could counter global warming with a nuclear winter? Well, today they got so caught up arguing that they didn't realize the boss-" she paused. "...Is something wrong?"

"Our daughter has had an interesting day at school."

********************************

Earlier:

"...So, I want to be the captain, and Erla wants to be the captain, and Zonid wants to be the captain, and Gyul wants to be the captain," Sillia summed up. "But a starship can only have one captain!"

Recess was off to a rocky start for their game of pretend. And she didn't want to end up spending half of recess just deciding who'd get to play what.

"I know!" she grinned. "Let's have a staring contest! Whoever wins gets to be captain!"

"That's dumb," Gyul protested, always the contrarian. "Mom says we can't do staring contests before 6th grade. Our eyes aren't hypnotic... enough..." he found himself losing his train of thought gazing into Sillia's eyes.

***********************************

Then:

"Well, we knew she was an early bloomer. Why does that have you in a tizzy?"

"It didn't stop there."

***********************************

Earlier:

Sillia gazed at her assembled, hypnotized friends and giggled. "Guess that makes me the captain! So, we're all on a spaceship, and I'm the captain, so you have to do as I say..."

***********************************

Then:

"She hypnotized all eight of them? Wow. Not bad for a nine-year-old."

"And she didn't just put them in a trance. They actually believed they were on a spaceship when they woke up."

"Oh. Oh dear."

"The teachers needed some effort to restore order."

"I see, I see. ...Well, we knew she had beautiful eyes. Makes me wonder if she inherited that hypnotic potential from her father?"

"Not like we have a way of knowing."

"Well, I guess we need to give her the hypno-responsibility talk a bit earlier than expected. It doesn't sound catastrophic to me?"

"No, but... I don't know. You know how big a sucker for romance she is." Sillia had never met a romantic subplot in a cartoon she hadn't liked. "I used to think it was cute. Now, I'm wondering if she's going to grow up to be a massive heartbreaker."

Her wife grinned and coiled around her. "As usual, you worry too much. Sillia's a good girl. She'll be fine."

"So why are we sneaking after your crush?" asked Erla, silently slithering after Sillia.

"Shut up, she's not my crush! She's old enough to be my, er..."

"She's old enough to be your crush who's two years older than you?" Erla unhelpfully volunteered.

Sillia rolled her eyes. "I don't have a crush on Fela. I think she's super cool, but that's not the same thing."

"Fine. So why are we following her?"

"Well, you know how our lockers are close? I noticed her getting a letter in it today. A scented letter. Mint."

"Ohhhh. Juicy." Mint, for whichever reason, was considered a "romantic" scent.

The two teen nagas followed the older one, stopping and peeking from behind a corner when they saw her reach the small grove behind their school... where another, much shyer-looking naga was waiting. Nionis, Fela's classmate, who was fidgeting nervously.

"H-hi," Nionis gave Fela a nervous smile.

"Hey." Fela was doing a somewhat better job of keeping her cool. "Got your letter. You said you had something to say."

"Y-yea," Nionis said, nervously staring at the ground in front of her. "I, uh, have a confession to make."

"Ohmygosh," Sillia whispered to Erla as they watched the two older girls.

"I'm listening," Fela said, hands in her pockets, only the shifting movements of the tip of her tail betraying her nerves.

"I... I need to confess..." Nionis slithered closer, until she and Erla were only four feet apart. Her blushing was getting deeper and deeper.

"Yyyyesss?"

"I have to tell you..." Nionis finally stared straight at Fela, her eyes glowing, "...that you love me. You want to be my girlfriend. You want to go out with me."

Fela's entire posture had relaxed, her head swaying slightly. "Yyyyesss," she agreed in a daze.

Sillia and Erla barely managed to keep themselves from squeeing in excitement.

It was so romantic.

"Hi mom, mom," Sillia called out as she got home.

"Hi precious, how was your day?"

"Was OK," the teenage naga shrugged. "Boring Slivegin class," she's picked Slivegin as her foreign language option because it was the native tongue of two of her friends, "got a 14 on my BGC test," 14 out of 20 was considered a good grade, and Sillia tended to do well in scientific classes such as Bio-Geo-Chi, "and they had ozerin meat in the cafeteria." The gigantic mammals had become a national favorite ever since being imported from the Sapphire Lands a few centuries ago, their flesh hitting naga taste buds just right - but they were slightly more expensive than some of the more typical fare.

Mom nodded. "And how was dance club?" It was considered standard for high school students to spend an hour or two in a club after classes.

"Oh. Uh," Sillia fidgeted sheepishly, "I didn't go. I'm thinking of stopping; it was fun to try out, but I don't think it's for me."

"That's your call to- wait, if you didn't go to dance club, where were you?" mom checked the clock.

"Uh... At the Queer Student Club."

Mommy blinked. "Precious, anything you want to tell us?"

"It wasn't for me!" Sillia protested exasperatedly. "I was just there as moral support!"

"For...?"

"...A friend."

"You mean Zonia."

"..." Sillia sighed internally. Zonia wanted to keep it secret, but... well, mom was perceptive. "I'm not gonna confirm or deny, but a friend of mind just... needed to attend."

"Oh," other mom called from the kitchen, "you mean because she's a stoneheart?"

Sillia's expression became a shocked one. Her nearer mom shouted back at the kitchen: "Tasty, do not use that word. It's a slur."

"It is?" Mom (the one in the kitchen) actually sounded contrite. "I'm sorry, I hadn't realized. What do they prefer to be called?"

"'Neutrals' is good, mom. Short for 'hypnotically neutral'." A small minority - less than 1% of the population, according to experts - for whom sexual, romantic and hypnotic feelings were disassociated. Zonia didn't get aroused by hypnosis, and didn't feel like anything in a sexual situation was missing when hypnosis was absent - a concept Sillia struggled to coil her head around.

"OK, 'neutrals' then. What I don't get is... why is that an issue? I mean, even if she was hyposuggestible," the unfortunate condition of being particularly difficult to hypnotize, which popular imagination tended to associate with being a neutral despite the total lack of correlation, "couldn't she go to a powerful enough hypnotherapist to have it fixed?"

"Mom, it's not something to be fixed. There's nothing wrong with her. It's just who she is. There are plenty of neutrals in perfectly happy relationships, with other neutrals or otherwise!" Also, there was an entire spectrum of neutrality, but she resisted the urge to go into lecture mode.

"Well said," said her mom (the one in the living room). "Society's more diverse than it used to be. No need to shove everyone into the same box."

The party was fun.

The music was great.

All her friends were here.

The food was good.

...So, really, that made it even more annoying how he was taking all her fun out of it.

"C'mon, babe," Vorn said with that smile he thought was charming, getting a bit too close for comfort. "Just look me in the eye. You know you want to."

"If I wanted to, I already would have," she said, resolutely refusing to meet his hypnotic gaze.

Vorn was, in her opinion, plain annoying. He'd been a bit of an early bloomer, his pheromones manifesting months before any of the other boys in their class. Since girls matured faster than boys, he suddenly was the only boy in the group getting that sort of attention from girls, which had convinced him he was the Sun and Moon's gift to women - and that confidence had actually improved how well he did in the dating scene.

Two problems:

First, Vorn was a smug jerk.

Second, male pheromones did nothing for Sillia.

Oh, she'd enjoyed the occasional roll in the hay with some nice boys... provided they engaged in proper forehypno. And she made damn sure they knew to do just that.

Vorn tended to half-ass the forehypno. The one time she'd had sex with him, he'd only put the bare minimum of effort programming her to enjoy it, and still somehow seemed to think he'd done her a favor by showering her with sexual attention.

Ugh.

"C'mon, babe. Remember how much fun we had last time?"

"Yes. That's why there won't be a second."

"Aw, don't play hard to get. Just look me in the eyes-"

"Oh, is that all?" She locked eyes with him... and the brilliance of her gaze was far more powerful than his own. The smug grin was soon replaced by a vacant, slack-jawed expression.

Soon enough, Vorn was off to enthusiastically hit on a (perfectly eager) male classmate. She doubted he was going to feel any attraction to girls before three days - maybe the whole week.

"Nice going," said the cute bluehead she'd had her eyes on since the party started. "That was impressive eyework."

"Thank you," Sillia blushed. "Just... I'm not super into boys."

"Really? I'm all about boys," the bluenette giggled.

"Ah, is that a challenge to change your mind, or is that a warning to not hit on you?" Sillia asked sheepishly. "Because I'm bad at reading signals, but I'll accept whichever it is."

The bluenette grinned. "Girl pheromones don't do a thing for me. If you want a tumble, you can go for it... but only if you're confident you can make me enjoy it."

Sillia grinned.

Five minutes later, Zuzuka (that was the bluenette's name) emerged from trance feeling extremely into girls, and utterly enamored with her newfound date. "You're good at this," she giggled as she and Sillia slithered together to get a room.

"I know," Sillia winked.

Sleeping with Zuzuka was fun... but Sillia couldn't help but feel a little empty afterwards. Frequent hookups were considered normal, especially at their age... but the romantic in her kept hoping for a girl who'd truly coil around her heart. Long-lasting love, like the romance her moms had.

But then, mom only met mom after college. Perhaps she shouldn't expect True Love to show up any minute now.