章 45: The Prodigious Nim, Part Fourteen

{Melisa} 

[Oh god.] 

Melisa stared.

She stared for an eternity, her eyes threatening to burn a hole through Armia's skirt, if the damn thing beneath it didn't burst out first. 

[Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,] she chanted internally, her face burning with a blush so intense she feared she might spontaneously combust.

A kaiju. A monster. An old cosmic deity rising from the depths, hidden beneath a pleated skirt. That's what that thing was if the size of the bulge was anything to go by. 

[I... Armia...] 

Melisa knew she shouldn't be too surprised.

The book she'd read had mentioned that 40% of darians were hermaphrodites. Isabella herself had been proof that just about anyone around Melisa could be in that category. But, she hadn't been mentally prepared to be put face-to-face with this reality again. 

[I was not ready,] Melisa thought, her brain short-circuiting as she tried to process the sight before her. [Not at all.]