Heart of Fey and Fire - Prologue

Author's Notes: This started out as me joking around about the perfect isekai for me, and somehow turned into an actual prologue... No idea when I'll next find time to update it, but I do have some exciting things planned for its future. It's already on SH, but under "Emilie Ember" since it's not an 'adult' story for once.

Dying sucked.

…That probably went without saying, huh? But like. There’s being dead, and then there’s dying and the process was honestly starting to feel suckier than the end result. Mostly because it was taking so damn long. I mean, I got hit by a freaking truck! That should have been an insta-kill, no?

APPARENTLY NOT.

Can you please stop complaining? Brittany - my headmate - pleaded with me. I won’t ask you to stop narrating - I know that’s how you cope - but like… No more complaints, please? Dying sucks enough without the running commentary on how much.

Well, what else was I supposed to talk about?

How about hopes for our next life?

Can I hope to be royalty, then? Because being royalty would be great, honestly. Also, if we were royalty, we wouldn’t have to explain to everyone why we wanted them to call us “Princess” all the time.

Unless we get born as a dude again.

“…Don’t even joke about that,” I choked out, actually responding for once. Or at least I tried to choke it out, before realizing that I couldn’t actually feel my throat. Or my neck. Or my head. My legs, my arms, my… everything, I guess? So why the hell was I still in pain?

Maybe this is some sorta weird limbo? Brittany suggested. Like… an isekai story. We’re about to see a beautiful goddess, and get a grand mission!

“Or we’re just hallucinating.” I couldn’t actually speak, but somehow Brittany seemed to be catching what I wanted to say anyhow. Which was weird, since - usually - whoever was in the front had to actually say shit aloud to be heard.

Then again, I usually couldn’t hear Brittany this loudly from the back, either… It was only when we went rapid-fire with our switching that we could hold a proper conversation, and that only really happened when we were intoxicated.

Not exactly the ideal circumstances to hold a conversation.

Hey, do you feel that?

I didn’t actually. But if Brittany could, maybe that meant we’d switched without me noticing? Like, maybe she was in the front and I was in the back… which was a weird thing to be happening as we laid in the street dying, or whatever, but who was I to judge our brain’s faulty software? Maybe it was just glitching out one final time.

No, seriously - I feel like… like pressure? And like… warmth. And-and-gah!

I wasn’t sure what she was screaming about. Yay for me? Except for the fact that I’d probably get ahold of the memories as soon as I took the front again. Then I’d know exactly what she was screaming about, in vivid detail… yay…

Okay, I know this situation is weird and getting weirder, but I swear something is pushing at us and I’m getting a little scared that we’re actually about to be-

And then there was light. Light, and noise, and a crying sound that I realized was coming from me. Or Brittany, I guess, if she was still in front? I… usually wasn’t so aware from the back, though. More like a vague presence Brittany could feel from the front. Or at least that’s how I remembered it… but the human brain was only really built for one set of memories at a time, I suppose, so… maybe it was always like this, and I just never remembered?

Whatever. I’d figure it out later. For now, it was better to focus on our surroundings. At least as best I could, when our eyes didn’t wanna fucking focus. All we could see for a moment was blurry shapes. Shapes that slowly, ever so slowly came into focus.

There was a man in the room, as well as a woman - and another woman, who was holding us against her chest, I realized. They were speaking in a language I couldn’t understand, but it wasn’t hard to put things together via context.

We’d just been born to the woman holding us. Our father? Assumedly the man with a crown. And, maybe more importantly, pointed ears.

What did that tell us? For one thing, we’d probably gotten our wishes, somehow. Isekai’d to a fantasy world, as a princess. (Hopefully a princess, anyways.) Of course, it was one thing to wish for it, and another thing to actually get it… I couldn’t help but think of all the harsh realities that might lay ahead. Strict studies, carefully defined etiquette, and - as a reward for it all - a political marriage. To a guy.

Maybe we’d just been reborn to a pair of cosplayers? Yeah, let’s go with that delusion for the time being… I mean, being reborn into our own world couldn’t be any stranger than being reborn into a completely different world, right? Even if those ears did look awfully realistic…

There was one other thing that bugged me, too. Namely that I generally identified as a ‘dragon girl princess,’ and Brittany was a ‘pixie princess’ - so, assuming this was real, why the hell were we reborn as an elf!?