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She threw both arms around him with the wholehearted force of someone who had no practice in managing adult limbs and no intention of starting responsibly. Her body hit his chest. Her hair flew everywhere. The blankets became even less useful than before.

"Master," she announced with shocking triumph, "now Bat Bat is big. Let us do it."

Sekhmet actually froze.

"DO What?"

Bat Bat pulled back just enough to look at him with the full seriousness of a woman explaining simple mathematics to someone unexpectedly slow. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"What you did with Lily."

Sekhmet stared at her.

Bat Bat nodded vigorously. "The kissing. The warm smell. The closed room. The suspicious breathing. I observed all of it. Now Bat Bat is also big. So clearly it is my turn."

For one second, Sekhmet’s mind simply stopped functioning.

Then she kissed him. Not well.

Not badly because of lack of enthusiasm. Badly because Bat Bat had no human practice and apparently believed kissing was performed the way one attacked fruit. It was all uncoordinated determination and absolute certainty that she was doing something correct because she had seen him and Lily do "other stuff" in the shape of scent, maid’s imagination, and implication and had concluded she now understood adulthood.

Sekhmet caught her shoulders and tried to pull her back.

"Bat Bat. Stop it."

She made an irritated sound against his mouth and pushed forward stubbornly.

At that exact moment, the maid outside reached the door.

She had knocked twice already and, hearing nothing, had assumed the young master was still sleeping heavily. The room was locked from inside, yes, but the inner household keys existed for exactly that reason. Elena preferred doors not to become excuses. So the maid, after one respectful pause, took the side key from her sash and opened the lock.

The door swung inward. And the maid saw everything.

Young master Sekhmet in bed.

A naked grown woman on top of him trying with heroic incompetence to kiss him.

Sekhmet was holding her by the shoulders in what looked, to any maiden heart lacking context, dangerously like struggle with a shameless rival.

And because human beings were often betrayed by emotion before reason had time to enter the room, the maid screamed.

Very loudly.

"A PERVERT GIRL HAS COME TO YOUNG MASTER TOO!"

The sound tore through the entire house like a weaponized wedding bell.

Bat Bat stopped.

Sekhmet closed his eyes for one terrible second.

The maid screamed again, louder and with more emotional detail.

"She is trying to kiss the Young Master! Come and catch her immediately."

That brought the house alive.

Footsteps were all over the place. Doors were opening. Gasps in distant corridors.

The reaction of every maid in Dawn House who loved Sekhmet in silent, hopeless, internally dramatic ways was immediate and violent.

They arrived in a flood.

The first three reached the room in less than five breaths, followed by more, and in the sort of moment that only a household full of overprotective, emotionally compromised women could create, they reacted without waiting for orders.

One grabbed Bat Bat’s right arm. Another seized her left arm.

A third, seeing too much skin and too little logic, snatched a sheet from the bed and tried to cover whatever she could reach first, which unfortunately was not enough and only made the scene more chaotic.

Then more maids entered.

One grabbed a leg. Another, the other one.

One clapped both hands over Bat Bat’s mouth because she had already opened it, no doubt to say something catastrophic.

Another tried to cover her chest with a pillow and the sheet at the same time, producing a result that resembled the world’s least elegant kidnapping.

Bat Bat kicked wildly, unable to use wings she no longer had, trying to protest through the hand over her mouth and only producing outraged muffled sounds.

"Bet Pat Pat go. Nor e mill keat vou."

Nobody understood what Bat Bat was trying to say. They only hear some mumbling sounds. (Author Note: If you understand what bat bat says, comment in the dialogue.)

Sekhmet sat in the middle of the storm for one completely motionless second, his hairs were disordered, his shirt was half open, his dignity of the young master was destroyed, and thought, in a calm so unnatural it could only have come from shock, This is why gods abandon mortals.

Then Elena arrived at that moment.

Of course she did.

She stepped into the room with one sweep of her eyes and took in the entire disaster in a single glance.

Young master in bed.

Naked human-sized Bat Bat pinned by six maids and two improvised layers of bedding.

A first maid on the edge of tears from outrage.

Three others froze in the doorway, deeply scandalized and also deeply interested.

The room was thick with misunderstanding.

Elena looked at Sekhmet.

"Young master," she said with terrible composure, "what is going on? Can you explain?"

"HmmmmHuuuuu"

Sekhmet took one deep breath. Then another.

Then said, as evenly as any man had ever said anything after waking to a transformed naked bat trying to force herself on him in front of a screaming household.

"Bat Bat grew up."

Silence.... Nobody spoke for a few seconds.

Then the maids blinked.

Elena’s eyes shifted to the writhing woman under sheets and hands and barely controlled chaos.

Sekhmet added, "It is Bat Bat. She just became human size."

That changed the room. Not into understanding. But into a different kind of confusion.

For one stretched, unnatural second, nobody in the room moved.

The maids just stared.

They stared at the wrapped, furious, human-sized woman struggling under sheets and hands.

They stared at Sekhmet.

Then back at the woman.

Then back to Sekhmet again.

The first maid, the one who had opened the door and screamed the house awake, looked the most betrayed. Her mouth opened. Closed. It opened again. Her eyes were so wide they looked as if they were trying to leave her face and file a complaint somewhere safer.

"Bat Bat?" she repeated faintly.