Canto IV: Ad Vitam Aeternam

"Haaaah, I’m out for now: I need to clear my head, so I’m going for a walk. Olivia, take care of the Professor, will you? And you, Godofreda, don’t cause too much trouble… But I know you'll do it anyway. What a pain.’’ With those words, Fetail exited Olivia’s house, after having eaten a hearty lunch: She’d eaten a plentiful plate of fries and a good hamburger. A few days had passed since Godofreda had arrived, and she’d fully integrated herself into the household and devoted herself to helping out Olivia-Hadrinyan and to bothering Fetail.

Carcabuey’s good inhabitants appreciated the Professor’s good cheer and her interest in the village’s cultural and historical heritage, which is why she quickly became something of a mascot for the villagers. Of course, Fetail included it all in her daily report, in which she had to report anything remotely interesting related to Hadrinyan and her surroundings. She’d even reported the unexpectedly heavy rains and the damages they had caused.

Fetail walked up the streets which led to the town hall, passing by the fountain and stopping for a moment. She considered turning to her left, where another path led into a section of the village which she was not familiar with: The street was named Calle Obispo Pérez Muñoz, named after a famous bishop.

But she decided against it: Deviating from her path would not bring her anything good. She walked to clear her mind of the stress of having to report on everything Hadrinyan did, against Fetail’s will. But it was better than being stalked by her younger sister or having to face her powerful older sister: She had appeased them by sending a few letters to them and to the rest of the family, but that wouldn’t work forever. There was something else on her mind: What do I do now? What exactly is my role here?

She walked up Calle Pilar, waving at the villagers who were cleaning the fountain. They were worried about Fetail, as she looked quite gloomy than usual instead of looking smug, slightly gloomy, or sardonic. Surely, they’d ask Hadrinyan-Olivia or even Godofreda to look into it when they could. Fetail swallowed another mercury pill and walked on, passing by a bank, empty lots and the village’s post office, which was in front of the baker’s. ‘’Haaah. Luckily for everyone here, Miss Almudena is working right now. Be a good girl and don't approach me, creepy stalker: You're a pain.'’ After reflecting on the overwhelming amount of weirdos in her life, she shook her tails, perked up her ears and prepared to move again.

From her position she could see the town hall, which was around 15 metres away: Its Andalusian, Spanish and EU flags flapped proudly in the wind. A few steps later, and she had to make a choice: Where would she go? If she went to the right, she’d go up past the cafés and bars and up a stone ramp which led to a path, which in turn led to the castle.

She didn’t feel like going there, so that limited her options: Since going straight wouldn’t lead her anywhere too interesting, she went left. Fetail walked with her head up high, her one-toothed wooden shoes making a distinct sound as they clashed against the pavement. The street she was in was called Calle Santa Ana, and was lined with parked cars and white buildings with brown doors and blinds. She followed the left side of the sidewalk, and walked past a few establishments devoted to renting homes and to promoting rural tourism.

Our gloomy fox-girl stopped in front of a tiny crossing, looked both ways and soldiered on, passing next to a bank and an ATM. She knew no cars could fit through the village’s narrow side streets, but she still wanted to be cautious: Her destination was in sight, and she didn't feel like getting hit by a motorbike. "Sic Semper Tyrannis, Sic Semper Tyrannis." She muttered those words as she walked past a beautiful and wide building, which had an exterior made out of brown bricks.

After 20 or so seconds, Fetail stopped as the street divided itself into a street which went to the left, and another one which went to the right. They were separated by a small chapel which had a metal bench facing the right side of the street outside its doors. ‘’Here it is. Ad Vida Aeternam.’’ The moment she sat down on the bench, a smile appeared on her face, and her gloom mostly vanished. ‘’Working sucks and makes me sad, being at home means having to deal with the annoying dog girl and her attraction towards me and my supervisee. But slacking off in some quiet corner lifts my spirits up. And I have that too, but I mustn’t overdo it, lest those two find out. I can just focus on lazing about and becoming immortal with minimal effort: That is my duty and goal! Yay for immortality! Yay for laziness and sloth!’'

Both her legs then turned into jelly, and she caught fire: It was to be expected, the stress she'd been building up did these things to her. This time, however, she didn’t freak out or get possessed by some atavistic fire god: The flames were small and she put them out before they did anything other than covering her in soot. Fetail let the wind rustle her ears, hair and gooey tails for about 10 minutes.

‘’That flat to my right belongs to Almu. I wonder how she’s doing. She's a creepy stalker, yes, but she's damn good at her job. Thankfully, she's not after me."

After making that comment, her leg returned to normal and she got up again, taking the path to the right. She passed a tobacco store, a supermarket and a few empty stores whose windows were lathered in Holy Week posters.

The asphalt there was quite degraded and cracked, so she made a mental note to complain to the mayor about it. Once again, the path split into two, this time separated by a bar. ‘’Silly me: The street I didn’t want to take leads here too! Well, I can’t do anything about it. I might as well look for a good place to slack off at.’’ This time, she took the path to her left: There were not many things in this area, apart from a vending machine and the fishmonger’s.

Our fox hero walked up the street, her shoes clacking against the chequered sidewalk: ‘’Ah, to be free: How delightful!’’ The two streets separated again. She stopped to pat a telephone booth, to encourage it to work. And once again, Fetail passed by a supermarket, after which she arrived at another bifurcation: Of course, she went left, once again: She was in awfully good mood that day.

She arrived at a street which was under repairs, Calle Lucerna, and walked on until the name changed to Calle San Isidro. This area was mostly residential, and very few stores were nearby. Near the beginning of the street, to its left, was a ramp which acted as a side street, Calle Calvario. Ignoring the left-hand path at the end of the ramp, which would take her on a little detour, she headed right, where the pavement ended up mixed up with mud and dirt. Once there, she took a deep breath through her gas mask and swallowed another mercury pill. ‘’Don’t do this at home, kids.’’

Her ears wiggled a bit, and she looked around: To her left, a long hill with a tiny stone wall ran along next to the path. She turned to her head and observed the view: There were no obstructions on the right side, and she could observe most of the village from here. The white houses with brown rooftops, the green mountains standing proud in the distance, and the birds chirping away reminded her that even though she had been forced to come to an isolated village, not all was bad: It was a rare moment of respite for her.

She took in the sights for about an hour while leaning against the hill, and waved at the villagers and the occasional tourist who passed by: The path continued, and near its end, which was not far away, storage areas appeared. She then waved goodbye to the beautiful landscape and went back home, stopping by the supermarket which was next to the telephone booth, to its right. Had they fixed it or not? She was not sure… But she had heard some disturbing rumors, saying that all telephone booths in Córdoba would be removed. Fetail hoped it wouldn't happen, and they'd leave some for the sake of symbolism.

Before she'd arrived, they'd already removed the yellow, pillar-shaped postbox in front of the cabin. Now it stood proud and alone.

Taking the street to the right of the telephone booth, Calle Maestro Francisco Carmona, she walked with a few bags in her hands. Instead of paying with money, she had paid with a fragment of one of her tails, which would regrow with time: It appeared that the gooey substance was potent and was very effective at combating bacteria and cleaning filth. Thus, it proved to be very valuable.

Fetail walked on through what was now Obispo Muñoz, brightly waving at the villagers who had finished cleaning the fountain with a familiar gooey substance, and were now chatting. They were visibly relieved at seeing her so happy, but they didn’t inquire as to the reasons behind her newfound good mood.

Fetail rang the doorbell of Olivia’s house, and Godofreda came down to open, giving our now not-so-moody fox a big hug. ‘’Yay! Fetail, I missed you, my friend!" Her tail was wagging intensely, just like a dog's.

Fetail scratched the girl behind her ears, letting out a long sigh. Yes, the Professor was quite annoying most of the time, but she wasn't a bad girl, and Fetail was thankful for that. ‘’Professor, you act like a dog. How unbecoming of you… Or how appropriate!’’

That made the Professor really flustered: ‘’Don’t underestimate meeee!’’ And the dog-girl headed for the stairs. ‘’What a weirdo. Well, not like I’m one to talk.’’

Fetail hopped up the stairs while humming an old White Russian song, but turned back when someone knocked on the door: It was Almudena. ‘’Zoya, there is a commotion caused by a Magical Girl, around the village’s main square. My beloved is not here, and I know not where she is: Since my Magic isn’t useful for dealing with commotions, I’ll leave it to you. I shall now look for my beloved.’’ With those words, the unremarkable-looking mailwoman melted into the shadows.

Fetail shrugged and glanced at Godofreda. ‘’I have a bad feeling about this! Please stay here, ok? I’ll be right back!’’ The dog girl waved her goodbye: ‘’Aw, you just arrived, and now you're leaving again! Please don’t die on me, friend! Come back in one piece!’’ Fetail took off towards the town hall, running as fast as her legs would carry her. Why did the village attract so many Magical Girls? She knew not. But if she wanted peace and to slack off properly, she’d have to deal with this...

‘’What a pain, I want to go home…’’ Those were her words when she laid her eyes on the scene playing out in the square. She could feel her determination to solve the situation shatter in an instant: She knew the Magical Girl who was in the middle of the square, surrounded by delighted villagers holding soup pots. She knew who the girl standing next to a tall, barrel-sized soup pot was. Fetail knew she couldn't entrust this to her hivemind, like she'd tried to do with her paperwork and reports: This one was a piece of work, and wouldn't be stopped by a meteor to the head.

The Magical Girl's name was Imperator Harenae, and she had the worst compatibility possible with Fetail. "I'm out of here. I don't even see a problem with this, bye!" Fetail turned around and tried to flee from the soup-lover, but was forcefully stopped by a yank to her tails. "Here it comes. I should have stayed home and ignored this."

"Oi oi oi, if it isn't Little Zoya, gobi! How long has it been, gobi?! About a month or so, I think, gobi! I guessed ya'd be around here, 'coz that's what the flight path of the ravens I saw told me, gobi! Are ya in good health, gobi? I sure hope so, gobi!" The newcomer pointed at the sky.

"Little Zoya, Mr Mayor, we must not allow a soup gap, gobi!" The mayor, who was observing the scene from the entrance of the town hall, looked like he was nursing a particularly nasty headache. Meanwhile, the villagers started returning to their homes or going wherever they had to go, having enjoyed the soup she'd served them, and were satisfied with the amount they were taking home.

The newcomer yanked on Fetail's tails again. ‘’Are you still trying to change the current Magical Girl system? Lodge a formal complaint to the Ministry of Magical Girls in Madrid, then, but don't involve me!’' That was Fetail's reply to the constant stream of words from Imperator's mouth.

Fetail was then forcefully turned around and had her head ruffled by the bizarre-looking tan girl who was dressed like a very revealing belly dancer, who wore ballistic glasses, had olive green bunny ears, and spoke in a strange manner which did not fit well with her Andorran origins… Of course, one couldn't forget to mention the monstrous, black scorpion tail emerging from her lower back. Her eyes were black but her pupils were white and in the shape of a 5-pointed star.

And her hair? It was olive green too, and it went down to her lower back, touching her scorpion tail, and ended it being quite pointy. Her bangs were concentrated in the middle, forming a solid triangle. It gave her bangs an M-shape. She wore a black headband around her head, too.

Her side hair was similar to Godofreda's, and her sideburns were short, thick and pointy, pointing slightly outwards. She had two locks on her head which stood out, but these were smaller than Godofreda's and were pointed backwards.

Imperator's outfit consisted of a small black, and bra-like piece around her flat chest. It was made out of metal, shaped like a large band and silver borders. It got shorter and narrower the closer it got to her armpits and back.

At its top, it had a silver, bell-shaped amulet with a pink gemstone in its centre. It was connected to her neck, where she had a silver collar. Said collar had a downwards-facing triangular amulet, which was connected to the bell amulet through the triangle's lowermost vertex.

The lowest part of her chest piece had a little, sideways oval amulet stuck to it, from which hung a sideways rhombus, connected to the oval by a chain: Three black jewels flanked the chain, hanging from the oval. In turn, three little tear-shaped jewels, which were black, hung from it. From both sides of the oval, a little chain extended up to connect them to the chest piece, with a black jewel at the end of each chain.

As for the rest of her outfit… She wore long sleeves on her upper forearm, not connected to her outfit. Their edges were black, but the sleeves were white, and they became wider the closer they got to her hands. In her left hand, she held a red frying pan and in her right hand, a broom.

She wore black hot pants. Her belly was exposed, and below, she sported a narrow and rectangular-shaped long skirt with a pointy end. Black jewels hung from the end of that skirt too, which went past her knees. She had a silver belt which connected the frontal part of her skirt to the back, and it was more elevated around the sides than around the front or back. And in the back area, two smaller versions of her front skirt hung, to the left and to the right, separated. In the middle of her front skirt hung a long widening and shortening chain which ended in three hanging black jewels: It ended near her knees.

In addition, her elaborate outfit included a long piece of silky cloth which went around her waist: It was attached to her belt, and went slightly below it. However, the cloth wasn't connected in the frontal area: No, it was divided in two! It attempted to connect, but failed and fell to her shins or so, widening the closer they got. At its edges, with three black jewels hanging from each, each side became black, and adopted a definite horizontal form, with the form it had traced on the way there being faintly triangular. To end it off, she wore white stockings which went slightly above her knees. And the Mary Jane shoes she wore were black with a vaguely flowery white pattern.

She looked goofy as hell, but she was a terror, Fetail knew! "Little Zoya, don't think I haven’t tried that, gobi! Those good-for-nothing dung-eaters ignored my complaints and forced me to kick their asses, gobi! That's a soup gap, gobi! I'm telling ya, I even tried to do the same with the Holy Hexagonal Table, gobi. Ya know, the guys in charge of coordinating the Magical Ministries, gobi. But they didn't let me in, and turned me away, gobi! The Table fears the scorpion-bunny, gobi! They fear the soup gap, gobi!"

Fetail could perfectly understand why they'd all either ignored her or turned her away. She'd always been like this, even before becoming a Magical Girl: The muscle-headed gourmet joined Fetail's class in their penultimate year there, as an exchange student from Andorra. During those years, Imperator, whose real name was Margarida Cairat i Freixes, whipped her class into shape through delectable food-based bribes and overwhelming might.

Surprisingly, Fetail found her actions to be correct, even if she was extremely annoying and rather intimidating: The class she was in quickly became one of the best in Moscow in terms of health and grades. And while she might have been a bit of a brute, she had the group's best interests at heart and never seriously injured anyone.

Satisfied with her experience, Margarida graduated alongside her classmates, and eventually went on to study astronomy elsewhere… Not. She screwed up and signed for gastronomy in Florence. Even though she'd somehow screwed up that badly, she'd taken it in stride and gone on to excel at that, partly due to the fact that her grandfather had been a great chef and taught her many things, and partly due to her own talent.

But lo and behold, Margarida and Zoya ended up in the same university! Having developed a fondness for the ever-lethargic Zoya, she went and befriended her by annoying her to high heaven. That was how they became best friends!

Once again, they graduated together and began to turn their thoughts to the future: Zoya wanted to work on her Praise of Energy Conservation, her manifesto in defence of her ideology of laziness. On her side, Margarida began looking into opening a restaurant … And at about that time, both 21 year-olds were turned into Magical Girls, a few weeks after they started appearing around the world.

That was when Imperator found the second thing she could not win against: The establishment. She tried her best to crush the system which prioritised using Magical Girls to make money rather than encouraging them to take care of their respective communities. But no matter how much she struggled, the establishment wouldn't budge. However, she wasn't about to give up! What was the first? It was hunger…

She decided to become a wanderer until she'd racked up enough heroic deeds to use them as leverage to jump over the tall wall blocking her path. If that failed, she'd simply try to blow a hole through it, again and again, until it worked. But there was a problem with her main plan: Her Magic. Her Magic, Atavistic Sand Emperor, was not very suited towards heroic acts. But did she care?

Not at all! She'd still try. If she couldn't earn their respect and admiration, she'd be satisfied with their fear instead. The Sand Emperor would gobi her way to the top no matter what it took. For the sake of the world and for the sake of her tiny, humble dream…

"I'm telling ya, we must not tolerate a soup gap, gobi! So won't ya have some, gobi? It's tasty, gobi!" Fetail decided to humour her: "Good grief, Margy. Do as you please, but don't serve me too much soup: I just finished my lunch."

"Ya really are the best, Little Zoya, gobi! Wait here, gobi. I'll serve ya some, gobi! Let's avoid the soup gap, gobi!"

Out of the soup pot, by Imperator's hand, came a red frying pan. She adjusted the level of soup in it, cleaned it a bit and handed it over to Fetail. "Drink up, good friend, gobi! En temps de fam, no hi ha pa tou, gobi! " That meant something like All food is good when you're hungry.

Regretting her choices in life, she held the pan in her hands and drank from it. It was… really good. Her friend's cooking hadn’t rusted at all. In fact, it had improved since the last time she'd tried it.

For all her gobi and needless use of force, Imperator could cook up one hell of a meal. Fetail calmly drank the rest of her soup, which tasted like chicken, and then asked what she had been wanting to ask. "Margy, where are you going next? I have to stay here to deal with my new job of supervising a Magical Girl, and send those pain-in-the-ass daily reports. But what about you?"

The girl stretched her arms wide and looked at the sky: "Ah, Little Zoya, what a question yer asking, gobi! Wherever the wind blows, wherever my fists can fly and wherever the sands consume, I shall go, gobi! Soc lliure com el vent, gobi!" Imperator reached inside the soup pot and pulled out its lid and a broom.

She covered the soup container with the lid and after that, she put the barrel-sized pot on her back, where it stuck as if it were magnetic. Imperator placed her frying pan on the soup pot's side, and did the same to her broom: They both stuck. If one looked closely, one would be able to spot thin bands of sand binding them to the pot, and thicker bands binding the pot to her back.

"May we meet again, Little Zoya, gobi! Remember not to let yourself be crushed by that goddamn wheel of fortune: That would be a true soup gap, gobi!" With those words, a massive explosion of sand filled the square, which forced the mayor to retreat inside, and Fetail to cover her eyes with her tails. Out of the cloud of sand came Imperator, in a biplane made of sand: She propelled herself through the skies by using her broom as a propeller, and as she was about to vanish into the horizon, something happened.

Following a huge dust cloud and a pillar of light, something shot up into the sky like a missile and shot the plane down. "Cazzo. So much for freedom. What a pain, I want to go home and sleep this off… I think I will." With those words, her legs turned into blue jelly and she ended up on fire again. Fetail was going to have to work hard to solve the mess she'd wisely predicted she'd find herself in, right? Oh no, she was going to ignore the crap out of this situation, as much as she could.

With those thoughts in her mind, she dragged herself home. ‘’Sic semper tyrannis: I wish I never had to work again. Go screw yourselves, you slave-drivers. You messed with my plan to laze around as much as you could, and now you’re pitting my friends against each other. Eh, this is too complicated. I’ll go pat the Professor a bit, that should calm me down. She is annoying, but damn me if she isn't goddamn cute. I wish she wouldn't be so touchy around me, though.’’ A wave of water hit her body, coming from the bucket the Mayor was holding, and it put out the fires on her body.

‘’Miss Fetail, are you ok?’’ He was quite concerned. She was glad he could speak a bit of English, which her group had been teaching to those villagers who could not speak it. She turned her head to face the moustached, top-hat wearing portly gentleman and shot him a thumbs up: ‘’Thank you for that, Mayor. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’’ She went home using her tails as legs, which would later spawn an urban legend about a spider-fox, but that is a story for another time…

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