Chapter 343: Elara, the Amnesiac Little One

"Wha--?! How awful!" Violette recoiled from Titania, stepping backward with her brows furrowing deeply. "So even after all these years, Queen Titania still has not fixed her terrible personality?"

"T-Terrible?! Say what now?! What did you just call me and my personality, you oversized, underdressed, attention-seeking minotaur?!"

Titania began rolling up her sleeves for a fight, her small hands balling into fists and her wings fluttering with barely contained rage, clearly ready to throw down with the much larger woman despite the obvious disparity in their sizes.

Violette pouted in disappointment and turned away from the aggressive fairy queen, facing Sakura instead with hopeful and pleading eyes. "Y... You remember me, right?"

Sakura was seemingly in some kind of daze or trance before Violette’s voice finally broke through the fog, her eyes refocusing as recognition dawned on her beautiful face.

She then smiled a deep, comfy, genuinely warm smile that seemed to radiate from the very core of her being.

A smile so full of affection and nostalgia that Benjamin, Elara, and Titania all shifted uncomfortably where they stood, moved by the unexpected warmth that was emanating from the usually calculating queen.

"Good morning, Violette. It has been far too long since we last stood face to face like this," Sakura’s feminine and melodic voice rolled out across the space between them, gentle and welcoming, as she brought her two hands together in front of her chest, fingers interlaced in a gesture of respectful greeting.

She continued: "In Irina-sama’s place, let me be the one to tell you this: your contribution to the last Celestial War, your sacrifice, your suffering and willingness to stand in the path of utter danger, was priceless and invaluable to our cause. You served well and bravely, and you served with honor. Well done, old friend."

Violette’s dark eyes also softened with emotion and relief, and she returned Sakura’s smile with one of her own.

It was a silent exchange of affection passing between the two ancient beings who had fought side by side in a war that had shaped the destiny of the current world.

But then, unable to contain her exuberance for even a moment longer, Violette suddenly sped toward Elara and grabbed the Amazon Queen firmly around her waist with both arms, pulling her into a tight and unexpected embrace.

"My, my, my! Is this not Irina herself?!" She exclaimed, her voice full of delighted surprise. "They look so much alike, I could almost mistake one for the other!"

"U... Unhand me this very instant, you strange and overly familiar woman!" Elara nearly jumped out of her skin from the sudden, unexpected touch, her body tensing and her arms flailing as she tried to push the larger woman away from her.

"Ehhhhh? Don’t be so squirmy and resistant! Stand still and accept you’re being adored right now!" Violette then moved from simply holding Elara to actively cuddling her like she was a large teddy bear, squeezing her tightly and pressing her cheek against the top of Elara’s head. "Ah, I know who you are now! You’re Elara, the daughter of Irina. That little girl who used to run around and get into all sorts of trouble!

"I can’t believe that small and short, adorable little stack of a child actually grew up to be this beautiful and commanding queen! Do you remember your Aunt Violette, little one?"

Elara was now blushing very hard, her pale cheeks turning a deep and embarrassing shade of red, as she continued trying to get the horned woman off her body with increasing desperation and embarrassment.

"Sh-Shut up with all of those false memories a-a-a-and made-up stories!" Elara stammered, "I have never known anyone called Violette in my entire life, and I certainly do not remember you watching over me, or anything else you are claiming! You must be confusing me with someone else entirely!"

"C’mon now, don’t be so shy, little one."

"D-Don’t call little one!"

"There’s no shame in having been young, small, and in need of protection," Violette began to pat the queen’s head gently, her hand stroking Elara’s hair with surprising tenderness, "you used to beg me all the time to show you some of my shiny treasures, and let you hold them in your small hands.

"You also used to beg me to go visiting the human society with you when your mother was not around, because you were so curious about the world outside and I was the only one who would take you without asking too many questions or demanding explanations. Does that ring a bell?"

"Desist at once!!"

Elara blushed even harder, her face now approaching the color of a ripe tomato, after she saw Benjamin’s teasing smile from afar, his eyes glinting with amusement at her obvious discomfort and embarrassment.

But strangely, despite her continued protests and her attempts to escape, the horned woman was quite strong and unexpectedly clingy.

Her grip was firm and unyielding no matter how much Elara squirmed and struggled against her embrace.

"M... Marina, is any of this true?" Elara turned her head to face her assistant, who was standing coolly and professionally at the side of the gathering, observing the entire scene with calm detachment, but a little amusement hidden behind her composed expression.

Elara continued; "Is this woman a person I should know and remember? Or is she simply a delusional stranger inventing stories to gain access to our village and trust?"

Marina opened her dark eyes slowly, and then she faced Violette directly and smiled warmly.

"Welcome back to Verdant Spire, Lady Violette. It is good to see you walking among us again after so many long years of absence," Marina greeted, "Please, I ask that you forgive Her Highness for her apparent rudeness and lack of recognition; she has only fragmented and unreliable memories of her childhood events and the people she knew during that time, so she genuinely cannot remember you."

"What?! How dare you treat me like some kind of amnesiac individual who cannot trust her own memory?!" Elara roared at her assistant, her voice echoing across the courtyard with indignation.

After looking well at Violette’s face for a while, studying her features and comparing them to ancient memories buried deep in her own ancient mind, Titania finally remembered who this woman was and why she seemed so familiar despite her initial confusion. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"Oh!! Violette, the Grootslang, the weird serpent creature who fought alongside us in the last war!" Titania chirped excitedly, her eyes gleaming with the joy of recovered memory. "I’m so sorry for not recognizing you immediately, Violette! Please forgive my rude behavior, too! I mostly knew you in your serpentine form, since you didn’t really use this human form very often. You preferred to stay in your serpent body most of the time, so seeing you as a human is throwing me off significantly!"

While Violette still clutched the blushing and squirming Elara tightly against her bare chest, the ancient beings — Titania, Sakura, and Violette herself — began to catch up with each other, talking animatedly about events and people from the distant past.

There were things the younger people there could not fully understand or comprehend, with their references flying over the heads of the less ancient listeners like birds too high to reach.

Though it was strange and somewhat unsettling to those same youngsters that Marina seemed to understand everything just fine, nodding along with the conversation and occasionally adding her own comments as if she had been there.

Benjamin watched all of this unfold from the side, and it was a really warm and comforting feeling to see those women laugh and recall those days of war and strategy together.

Their voices rose and fell with shared memories and inside jokes of old comrades who had survived terrible ordeals side by side.

But the warm and pleasant atmosphere was soon cut short by the small wave of bloodlust that came his way, directed at him specifically.

A targeted pulse of murderous intent that cut through the cheerful noise of the reunion like a knife through butter.

He winced visibly, his body flinching with the force of the hostile intent, and turned his head directly toward where the feeling was coming from to identify the source of the threat.

Lo and behold, Lotus was watching them from behind a large tree some distance away from the main gathering, hidden in the shadows of the trunk and the branches, but her eyes were clearly visible and absolutely terrifying in their intensity and their cold fury.

"Uhm, excuse me everyone, but I think I need to step away for a moment! You guys keep catching up and sharing old stories without me! I have something really important to do right now!"

Benjamin waved at the group vaguely, his voice slightly higher and faster than normal.

He began backing away from the gathering, preparing to run off before Lotus could close the distance and confront him about his long delay and his new female companion.