Read Novel Full Chapter 1780 Wimpy Nun
Chapter 1780 Wimpy Nun
"Come down."
A calm, clear instruction.
The elf girl's ears perked.
She pushed off the branch and dropped straight into the elf sister's waiting arms.
"Yes, Sister!" She beamed, nuzzling into the nun's shoulder.
Mira stared.
Her eyes narrowed into slits so thin they could have cut glass. "She did it immediately," she whispered, her voice hollow. "I begged..."
The wolfkin sister cracked her neck, drew a slow breath, and opened her mouth.
"RETURN!" The snarl that came out shook the leaves off the nearest bush.
The dogkin girl froze mid-sprint on the far side of the clearing.
Her ears flattened, her tail tucked between her legs, and she came trotting back with her head low and sat on the blanket without a word.
Then the wolfkin turned toward the hole.
She dropped to all fours and dove in headfirst. The earth shook, a muffled shriek echoed from below, and the dwarven boy came flying out, dangling upside down by one ankle in the wolfkin sister's grip.
"Unacceptable!" he shrieked, swinging his fists at her arm. "This is tyranny! I demand a trial!"
"Eat first," the wolfkin said, and set him on the blanket.
She brushed dirt from her robes and turned to Mira, who hadn't moved from the grass.
"You're too nice to them," she said simply. "Assert yourself or these ruffians will never take you seriously."
Mira sat up slowly. Dirt caked her robes from collar to hem, grass stuck to her hair, and her glasses hung from one ear.
"Maybe..." She looked down at her hands. "Maybe a weak human woman like me just isn't cut out for this. I already struggled with human kids, but now..."
The words came out quiet, and the hurt in them was real.
She loved these children.
She wanted to be enough for them. And maybe she wasn't.
The clearing went still.
"Nonsense," the elf sister said firmly. "It has nothing to do with your race, physical strength, or gender."
The dogkin girl's ears drooped.
She crawled across the blanket to Mira's side and pressed against her arm.
"I'm sorry, Sister Mira..." Her voice was small. "I'll behave now... Please don't leave..." She curled tighter. "I was only messing with you because... because messing with Sister Mira is too much fun..."
The elf girl looked away.
She crossed her arms and lifted her chin.
"Sister Mira is a wimpy quitter," she told the tree she'd just climbed down from. "Hmph."
She did not look at Mira, yet her droopy ears gave her away.
The dwarven boy scoffed from where the wolfkin had deposited him. He crossed his arms and muttered at the ground.
"For a sun lover... she's not the worst."
Mira looked at the dogkin pressed against her arm, and the elf girl refusing to make eye contact, and the dwarf who had just delivered the highest compliment his seven-year-old dwarven heart could manage.
Her glasses fogged.
She pushed them up with the back of her wrist, and the smile that broke across her face was crooked and fragile and real.
"Let's eat, you damned brats."
The three nuns set up the meal with the practiced rhythm of women who did this every day.
The wolfkin sister spread blankets, the elf sister unpacked bread, cheese, dried fruit, smoked meat, bottles of milk, and a clay pot of stew that steamed in the cold air.
Mira sat with the dogkin girl still glued to her side and pretended her eyes weren't red.
The children converged in waves, running, walking, dropping from trees, crawling from holes. They arranged themselves on the blankets with the chaos of creatures who had done this a hundred times.
The elf girl took one look at the smoked meat and wrinkled her nose so hard her entire face compressed.
"That's a dead animal."
"It's delicious," the dwarven boy said, and took a bite large enough for three children while staring directly at her.
She turned away with her chin lifted and pointed ears twitching. "It's barbaric."
"More for me." He took a second piece. "Go munch on your leaves, there's plenty."
"Grr!!"
One of the newly arrived dwarven boys inspected the elf girl's pile of fruit and vegetables with open suspicion. "That's not food. That's what food eats."
"Your entire race lives in a hole!" one of the elves fired back.
"It's called a HALL, you uncultured swine!"
The dogkin girl dropped between the warring factions and ate everything within reach with undiscriminating joy, alternating between bread and meat and fruit without noticing that sides existed.
"See?" One of the elven girls pointed at the dogkin's meat-eating with vindicated horror. "Even she eats it!"
"She eats everything," the dwarven boy said, with more respect than judgment. "Yesterday she ate a pinecone."
"It looked tasty!" the dogkin girl protested, ears flattening.
"Did you finish it after realizing it wasn't?"
"...Maybe."
Above them, the silence had changed.
Myrasyn was watching an elven girl break off a piece of bread and hand it to the dwarven boy because his hands were full of meat and he couldn't reach.
He thanked her with his mouth full.
She wrinkled her nose at the crumbs but didn't pull away.
Her throat worked once.
What she was watching didn't exist on the continent.
Not in any living memory, not in four thousand years of history.
Elven children did not share food with dwarven children while a wolfkin poured them milk.
The suggestion alone would have drawn silence in any court.
Three nuns in white robes were managing it between meals, and the hardest part of their afternoon was extracting a seven-year-old dwarf from the ground.
Alexios's hand had found the branch beneath him at some point, and his knuckles were white around it.
"This isn't staged," he said, and the words came out rough.
Elisabeth stood on her branch with her arms at her sides, watching a human nun, an elven nun, and a wolfkin nun care for orphans of every race as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Sister Mira scolded the dwarven boy for eating too fast while wiping crumbs from his cheeks with her sleeve, and the elf sister was handing bread to a dogkin child, and none of them treated any of it as remarkable.
Her hand found the Goddess's sigil at her throat. The brightness in her eyes had nothing to do with anger.
Felicity was gripping her branch with both hands, leaning so far forward that Alexios had to catch her shoulder. "So cute!! Can we join them? I'm really hungry..."
"No," Alexios said simply.
"Why not?" Quinlan grinned, fully embracing the fun uncle role.
Alexios turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. Before he could voice his opinion, however, wind swept them off the tree.
"Learn to live, old man," Quinlan's voice carried through the gust toward the ancient king just before Quinlan landed in the clearing first, and every child within thirty meters went silent. "Aren't you gonna keel over and die any moment now?"
A beat passed.
Then the dwarven boy pointed. "THE DARK KNIGHT!!"
The clearing erupted.
Boys shot to their feet and charged, questions tumbling over each other before they'd taken three steps.
The girls froze, hands flying to their hair frantically to ensure all was in order and their postures straightening in a wave that rippled across the blankets.
The wolfkin sister's nose twitched.
She sniffed the air twice, and her ears pinned back. "How... I didn't sense..."
The elf sister's head snapped toward the canopy, eyes widening as two immense elven presences flooded her senses, suppressed until this moment. "They suppressed my detection..."
Mira was on her feet before anyone else moved.
Her glasses sat crooked, her robes were still caked in dirt, and the look on her face when she recognized who was standing in her clearing went from shock to fury so fast it skipped everything in between.
"You!" She jabbed a finger at him. "What do you want now?! Haven't you done enough tormenting me?!"
"Sister Mira!!!" the girls yelped in sync. "You're talking to..."
"I know who I'm talking to! That's my problem!" Mira growled.
Indeed, the overly expressive nun had been through a few adventures with Quinlan, such as being dropped from the skies and only caught with her face inches from the ground.
"Can we join?" Quinlan asked, nonchalantly ignoring the screeching