Esmie the Calamity Chapter 3 (Patreon)

I woke up laying on something soft, and wriggled a little to get an idea of what it was before I gave up and opened my eyes to take a look. I was laying in a circle of grass within a small clearing. The forest beyond looked reasonably pleasant, with lush green leaves and tall trunks. The outer edge of the circle of grass was ringed in vibrant flowers and mushrooms. Was I in a fairy circle?

I moved to sit up, and felt… wow, so many things at once. First was that everything felt a little different, even from the body I had been in earlier. I felt movement on my chest when I sat up, my little boobs bouncing strangely, and it was all just. The best way I could describe the secondary changes was that I was squishy.

I poked at my thigh in confusion and wonder… so much squish! Then my hips, which also had a lot of squish. My hands moved to my boobs through the linen shirt, because I needed to squish those too. They were… surprisingly less squishy than my thighs. Their squish was firmer than my thigh squish… but it was also a good squish.

Wow this was so different! I was like… at least ninety percent squish now. Like, even though I looked thin and small or whatever… it was deceptive. It was all squish. Squish all the way down. It was addictive. I sat there just poking my thigh in wonder for a few moments, grinning as it wobbled. I was wearing very short shorts, and it meant that my pale hairless thighs were on complete display and available for squishing.

Then I grabbed my thigh with my whole hand and squished some more, and let out a disbelieving giggle. Wow that was great! Being squishy was pretty great. Why didn’t everyone want to be squishy like this? Wait a second… was that a giggle?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about giggling… but I guess it made sense, a higher voice like this one would sound like giggling instead of chucking or whatever? Maybe? Wait, what did my voice sound like?

“Hello! I am Esmie!” I told the empty clearing, trying out the new name I’d been given by the random name generator thingy.

Wow! My voice was cute as fuck! If voices could also be squishy, my voice was that.

“La la la la!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air for effect.

I was going to continue with the verbal squishing, when I felt a strange sensation from behind me. Oh! My tail! I turned to try and see it, but my butt turned too, and it moved out of sight. Damn, how do you control tails? I wobbled to my feet, unsure of myself in this body, and tried to turn around to see it. Damn elusive tail!

I concentrated, trying to get the stupid fluffy thing around in front of me, but only succeeded in wagging it. Okay… think harder! I closed my eyes and focused on becoming as still of mind as I could possibly manage, but then I started laughing because it was very silly. I was trying to meditate so I could learn to master the arts… of tail.

I sighed in frustration and curled my tail around in front of me to play with while I considered how best to learn to control my tail.

"It can't be that hard can it?" I asked the fuzzy white tip of my tail as I twitched it around in thought.

Then I blinked, something funny was going on… oh. Fuck I'm dumb.

"Well, I guess you were right huh?" I grinned wryly at my tail. I'd just been trying too hard to move it, same as when you consciously tried to move any other limb.

Well, now that I had my tail problem all sorted out, what did I do next? My ears seemed to be able to perk up to a horizontal position and swivel around just fine, despite their floppiness… 

Which meant that everything was functioning and green across the board! Did that mean I played the game now? What was my objective? Wait, I needed to find Lynna! I did a quick look around for the menus and stuff, spinning in circles trying to look in the corner of my eye and stuff. I could see little blinking lights! Damn it!

“Menus, I demand that you cooperate!” I growled at the empty clearing, only for my voice to come out… well, less than menacing.

The menus popped up, only it was the wrong menus! I had pod menus too? Fuck it, I’ll walk out of this forest and find someone who could help. That was a much better plan than spinning in circles— 

“Excuse me miss… are you alright? Would you mind getting out of the spirit circle before you start dancing?” I heard a timid feminine voice ask me.

“Oh! Hello! A person!” I sighed in relief, spinning to look at who’d just found me. “Where am I?”

She looked to be a young human or elf of some kind, around my age, and she wore the long brown robes.

“Oh no… another one,” she muttered to herself, before beginning to speak very slowly, “I’m sorry miss, please can you follow me? We’ll get the toxins out of your system in no time, and I suggest you don’t eat any more of the mushrooms in these woods.”

“Oh, I didn’t eat any mushrooms though,” I said, looking around in confusion.

“Are you sure? The mushrooms in this grove are powerful things, grown for their mana replenishment properties. They do however have a powerful hallucinogen effect. We find confused wanderers in here very regularly,” she explained, squinting at me suspiciously.

“I’d just like to get out of here,” I winced.

“Well, I can show you the way out,” she said like it was just another chore in her day.

“Okay, thanks,” I mumbled.

I followed her through carefully maintained dirt paths until rather suddenly, we were standing at a small wrought iron gate while she unlocked it. The whole forest was ringed in a wall that was about eight feet tall and tipped with spikes. Okay, so the people who actually came here for the mushrooms were braver than me, that was for sure.

When we passed through the gate, I found myself staring around at a quaint little walled monastery looking place. It was so cool! I just realised that I was at like, the starting area of a normal video game, but in VR! Oh, would I get starter quests, or… wait no, find Lynna first.

“That way is the exit,” the girl said, motioning to an open arch on the other side.

“Oh, um… thanks,” I smiled, hoping I hadn’t annoyed her too much.

I wandered out of the place and looked around, seeing that the monastery place was on a low hill, with a dirt path leading down to a dirt road that then snaked over to the gates of a city. This was so cool! That must be the starting city or whatever right? Which means Lynna might be there!

The city was funny looking, it had these wooden walls around it that were huge, the tree trunks used in their construction were like, thirty feet tall! They had heat curved and then carved them, and their gleaming surfaces caught the sun in a really pretty way. The whole city was built using construction methods that seemed more at home in ship building, rather than actual architecture.

Starting down the path towards the dirt road, I looked around at the rest of the countryside. The land was rolling and broken, and it actually looked very much like the constant low hills of New Zealand, except that it was all on a slant, rising slowly towards some truly fucking enormous mountains off in the distance behind the city.

It was pretty clear where the civilisation ended too, because the meadows and pastures with their stone fences abruptly ended in a wild tangle of forest that completely dominated the rest of the countryside. Off in the distance, up the world-warping angle of the hills towards the mountains, you could see where more patches of forest had been cleared for farming, like islands in a sea of dark green. It was so, so pretty. There were also probably countless horrors waiting in those woods ready to tear the arms off little old me.

I was on the road and walking the kilometer or so towards the city when I got a notification saying that someone was messaging me using the FTLN internet instead of the ingame messaging system. A little text box popped up, and I saw that it was Lynna!

[Lynna]: “Yo! Are you in yet?”

[Redacted]: “Yes, I am outside a city and walking towards it, I spawned in a funny forest place and the girl who found me thought I was high.”

[Lynna]: “Oh, you must have gotten the Gyshtorum woods spawn! Add me as a friend ingame and we’ll party up and find each other!”

[Redacted]: “I can’t make the menus work.”

[Lynna]: “Are you serious right now? Omg, okay, I’ll meet you in the market square that’s in the center of town okay? I look mostly the same, except I’ve got dark grey-blue skin and big pointy ears.”

[Redacted]: “Yes.”

[Lynna]: “See ya soon!”

I laughed at my friend’s consternation over my inability to operate the game’s menus. She was going to be laughing to herself over this, and then laughing at me when she found me. Best to get my laughing in first, or she’d never let me have a turn.

I got into the city no problems, with only a few weird stares from the guys around. They kept looking at my legs, it was odd. Did I have something on them? Did I get mud on them somehow? I kept checking, but I found nothing.

The architecture inside the city was just as cool as the walls! It was all bare varnished wood that had been carved and curled into crazy looking buildings. Everything looked like some part of a ship or something, with roofing that was a dark slate material. I’d never seen anything like it in the non-VR games I’d played and seeing it all in like, almost reality was so incredible!

The space beyond the gate was basically just a small square with a fountain in the middle and streets leading off in all directions. After asking a very, overly helpful guard where the central square was, I followed the street he’d indicated until I found it.

The market square was… everything. It was just so… bustly. If I was all squish, then this place was all bustle, that was for sure. The bustle was like, totally going to keep me from finding my — Oh, there she was. Well that was easy!

Lynna was leaning against the wall of a building that also served as the edge of the market square. It looked like a magic shop of some kind, and I wanted to look in there like, right away. Maybe not right away actually, but like, soon. When I had money maybe. I wonder if they sold random trickety things. I wanted like, a cute little mage light ball or something. That would be so fun.

Lynna looked so cool in the game. She was kinda short, but not as short as me, and she wore form fitting leather armour with lots of little belts and clasps and a few knives in little sheaths. Her skin was indeed a dark grey-blue colour, and her ears were really long and pointed. They were so long, that their own weight made them droop a little, and they were wider than normal human ears too. Bigger than mine even, and mine were pretty big! She looked like a proper rogue! So cool! 

Walking over to her, I smiled up at my now slightly taller friend and said, “Hello!”

“Um, hi?” she asked, her big dark purple eyes looking at me with suspicion.

“Hi!” I smiled again.

“Yeah um… what do you need? You’re not going to try and convert me to a religion or anything are you?” she asked, looking even more suspicious now.

“What? Lyn, you know I’m not into the whole churchy thing!” I grumbled, frowning up at her.

“Wha— oh my god!” she blurted, her eyes going real damn big. “That’s the character you chose to make? What?!”

“Oh, yeah! Cute huh? I’m so squishy! You should try squishing me, it’s so great,” I smiled, twisting to look down at myself with a bubbly grin.

“This is wild, hold on… seriously, D— “ she said, before I lunged at her and covered her mouth with my hands.

“No, I’m Esmie in here,” I said in sudden panic. I didn’t want this character to be sullied with my real world name. It felt… wrong.

Then I lost my balance and fell against her, still holding her mouth shut, but all my squish was pressed against her. Now she was staring at me in surprise. I was surprised too, it felt crazy having my squish squished against her. Kinda warm, maybe a little nice?

Her hands came up and gently pushed me back until I was standing, like how you’d set right a freestanding log that had fallen over. “Okay, Esmie it is,” she smiled, still looking very confused.

We stared at each other for long moments, her eyes going down and around me like all the guys in the line to get through the gate had done.

“What? Is there mud on me?” I asked, spinning around in circles again to try and see what she was looking at, only for my tail to whap her repeatedly on the legs. It was very large.

“Are you sure that’s you in there?” she asked instead, her eyes capturing mine in another funny stare.

“I am definitely me, yes,” I nodded happily, ears flopping back and forth like fuzzy metronomes. I was enjoyed the way she didn’t use my real name.

“You know what I mean,” she sighed in exasperation.

“Yes, yes, hold on…” I said, bringing up the pod menu thing that she’d used to message me through.

[Redacted]: “Hello, I am Esmie.”

She seemed to relax a little, then smiled apologetically, “Sorry, had to be sure you know? This game is… kinda cutthroat sometimes.”

“Oh is it? I haven’t seen any people dying or anything yet, but I might have been distracted by my squish so you never know,” I said with a nod.

“Your… squish?” she asked slowly.

“Yeah, look!” I grinned, and began to poke at the inside of my exposed thighs with a finger. Oh wow, Lyn just went very red! I had to ask, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m good,” she nodded, her voice sounding like she needed to cough.

“Cool, that’s good... can you um, help me figure out how to get the ingame menus to work?” I asked, feeling very dumb.

That got Lyn’s grin back, and she worked me through troubleshooting it with that laughter I’d talked about. She had a nice laugh.