WFT 04

World’s Fluffiest Teacher

04: Culture Clash

Raine had known English all her life. It was her birth language, the one her mother spoke in, the one her family spoke, and the one everyone she knew spoke. She’d liked learning English and learning about writing so much she got a degree in it. Which is all to say she knew English fairly well by this point. Unfortunately, her record with other languages were spotty.

She’d half learned Spanish, only remembered how to say, “Tengo miedo de ninas pequenas” because it was a meme-y phrase she learned after watching one too many horror movies with terrifying ghost girls. Raine had been far from proficient, but she’d been able to learn it in school without too much difficulty as it was related close enough to English to not be too burdensome.

Which brought her to the present. New world, new life, new language. Specifically, Bussin was, as far as she could tell, a Cyrillic language that seemed oddly intertwined with the name of the academy. Which was unfortunate as she knew jack and shit about Cyrillic languages.

“Right, now let’s go over introducing yourself again?” Prismatia said, grinning.

Raine cleared her throat, already dreading her pronunciation, but…

“Привет, я глупый лис и учусь говорить на языке Буссин, пожалуйста, будьте терпеливы,” she said, only minorly butchering the pronunciation. Although it was weird how wide Prismatia’s smile was at this. It was just introducing herself and explaining she didn’t know the language well, right?

“Good, good. You’re getting there,” Prismatia said, smothering a giggle. “You just, ah, speak cutely, that’s all.”

Raine stared at Prismatia. She couldn’t say she knew the dragon lady all that well at this point given she’d been on this world for all of a week, tops, but she did strongly suspect she was being fucked with just ever so slightly.

Raine was about to say something else when she noticed Prismatia was no longer staring at her face. She was staring a few inches above her face. The reason took a few seconds to hit Raine.

She facepalmed. “My ears are doing the thing again, aren’t they?” ‘Thing’, in this instance, referred to the way her ears seemingly moved of their own volition and in this instance stood straight up in ‘alert mode’.

“Yes, yes they are. Why, do you suspect me of something malicious, my dear student?” The dragoness gave her a guileless grin.

Raine groaned as Prismatia took entirely too much amusement in her new fox-y appendages. Raine waved Prismatia and her stupid cute smile off, but doing so got distracted by her hand.

Raine held her hand up, looking it over in the light. It was a nice hand, pretty, with nails that were still perfect. Probably would look real nice with some sort of nail polish, but were unadorned at the moment, and otherwise unremarkable. Yet, to her, the hand looked so weird and delicate compared to her old hand and its litany of injuries, pinkie included.

“You seem distracted, Miss Raine. You don’t exactly have funds and you certainly don’t know where I keep my... intoxicants, so you’re probably not stoned,” Prismatia raised an eyebrow.

Raine’s brain skipped a beat, processed her words, and heat promptly exploded on her cheeks as what had to be a full blush paraded its way onto her face. Even in her old life this was such a stoner thing to do, holy crap. She was no stranger to embarrassment, given her propensity to shove her foot down her throat that’d only gotten marginally less common as an adult, but gods this sucked.

Unbidden, her tail floofed up even more in response to her emotions and the fact Prismatia was still staring made it so much worse. She caved a second later and hid her face in the tail and maybe, just maybe, screamed into her tail a little. Just a teeny tiny bit.

“...cute,” Prismatia mumbled under her breath, probably assuming she wouldn’t be heard, but Raine’s new ears had quite the sharp hearing.

“… not cute,” Raine whispered, face still hidden.

Ever so slowly, she disengaged from her tail. Her face burned, but the initial urge to hide, flee to the safe and dark undergrowth and underground, faded enough she could show herself. “It’s not that. I just, see my pinkie?” she said, holding her hand up and spreading her fingers for emphasis. “Back in my old world, in my old body, I had sliced my finger on a, er, pencil sharpener? Don’t know if that translates here, but well, the thing was faulty and should’ve been replaced years before. Cut my pinkie up bad on it as a child, and it’s so weird to not see the scar when I look at my hand. Just weird, you know?”

“We don’t use pencils— we tend to put graphite to other uses, but the concept translates, yes,” She nodded. “Magical healing and bodily transformation can be like that.”

Then, Prismatia made some gestures. The air seemed to spark around the gem on her necklace and was… drawn in? Prismatia’s eyes were closed and she had an intense focus, her mouth moving silently before, with a pop the sparks disappeared entirely.

Raine thought it over. She’d gotten a crash course in magic here. English, somehow, was a way of controlling magic, but there were magical energies into the world that ebbed and flowed. These energies apparently got excited with her unintentional casting which she was only ever so slowly getting a control over. The gem itself was probably storing the magic, in lieu of channeling it into a lightning bolt or something similar. Fiction of her world got that much right, at least.

“I see. I am looking forward to being able to speak and not accidentally make the world excited,” Raine muttered. “Throwing magic around with my voice sounds nice, too.”

“Yes, you could definitely say your voice is magical,” Prismatia giggled, shooting her a wink.

Raine opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the primordial void voicing its supreme displeasure at the lack of offerings and screaming its fury to the heavens.

Aka, Raine’s stomach was hangry.

…

“Welp, time for a lunch break, looks like,” the dragoness shook her head, smiling.

Raine just hid her face in her tail again.

~~~~

Prismatia lead Raine towards one of the academy’s communal cafeterias— she’d invested quite a bit of her own funds in ensuring the school hired skilled chefs and bakers from all over to ensure that her staff and students had access to a large variety of high-quality food. Nobody would subsist on instant ramen under her watch. A well-made bowl of ramen was quite good, but the instant stuff? It was the definition of what her students called a ‘struggle meal’.

“So, what is it that you’d like to eat? Our cafeterias have cuisines from all over the globe— we had cuisines from all over the cube for a while until we got that... fixed, “she asked the kitsune.

Raine sniffed the air, head tilted and raised in a particularly foxy way she probably didn’t even realize just yet. “Is that… ramen? You have ramen here?” she asked, confused.

“...Yes? We have a fairly globalized economy, even if we tend towards magitech rather than mundane technology,” Prismatia explained. “That, and I’ve personally invested in ensuring my students, who tend to be rather... I believe the word is cosmopolitan, have access to foods from all over the world.”

Raine’s nose scrunched up and ears twitched, tail waving behind her as she took in Prismatia’s words. “I guess I’m just… surprised? I suppose the fact that there is shared biology is one thing, but to me this rings of eastern [European] culture and architecture,” she said, the peculiar word not translating but presumably referring to a place on her world. “I was taken aback to see a food that many of my old students would recognize, if of an undeniably improved quality and… is that pho?” she asked, her tail starting to wag.

“It is, yes,” Prismatia nodded. “I’m not sure how much the food culture is different between our worlds, but... well, there are always going to be some commonalities.”

“I see,” Raine said, eyes clearly focused elsewhere and ears pointed straight up like she was on the hunt. “We’ll have to discuss that… later. Because I have not had good pho in a long time. Last good place that had it shut down in my old world and I hadn’t been able to get any but the packaged stuff.” With that said, she practically raced off to help herself at the noodle section to load up on pho, a kindly old cafeteria gargoyle ladling the pho into the porcelain bowl she’d grabbed.

Prismatia got a pizza with extra cheese, bacon, sausage, salami, roasted garlic, pineapple, and a thin layer of buffalo sauce on top. Dragons needed a lot of calories, and if her student was going to indulge, so would she. She guided Raine over to a quiet table in a corner away from most of the rest of the gathered students and faculty before sitting down to eat.

Raine sat across from her in the seat by the crystal glass window, light reflecting off her dark hair to reveal almost a purple hue in her hair. Raine, tail still wagging and seemingly unaware she’d almost hit several people with her happy tail, took her first bite of pho and…

Moaned.

Prismatia froze— multiple instincts warring in her brain. A part of her wondered if the little fox was simply a foodie, and another wondered what’d it be like to be the cause of such a noise. Yet another simply wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard that. What she settled on, however?

“Enjoying yourself, Miss Raine?” she asked, her tone teasing and a slight smirk on her face.

“Yes!” she said, smiling widely after patting her lips with a napkin and seemingly entirely unaware of the vixen in heat sound she’d just made. “I have not had good pho in ages and this beats out the last I’d had handily. I might just get seconds!” she said. Her tail was still wagging.

“adorable...” Prismatia rumbled. “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

She set to messily devouring her pizza, enjoying the complex flavors. Anyone who said pineapple didn’t belong on pizza could bite her generously padded ass. Not that she was going to say that out loud— someone might take her up on it.

As she ate, one of the chefs approached. The chef in question was a rather plump Saturnian fellow with a thick mustache and a seemingly omnipresent grin. “Heyya, boss lady. Does your ah, guest have a sweet tooth?”

Raine tilted her head consideringly. “I wouldn’t say no to a sweet treat. Been more of a savory fan all my life, but I can appreciate the sweeter side. Whatcha got?” she asked in English to the chef.

“She said she likes savory things more, but she can appreciate the sweet stuff. What do you have?” The dragoness said, grinning at the chef. Gregorio Morino was a clever man with a wicked sense of humor— she wondered what he’d bring out for her protégé.

Gregorio nodded primly and pivoted, his movements crisp and clean and filled with ominous purpose. He returned moments later with a humble loaf of cinnamon bread.

It was topped with drizzled brown sugar glaze and nuts, sliced open to reveal a beautifully complex swirl of cinnamon in the otherwise white of the bread that contrasted delightfully. The scent itself was positively divine, a spicy hit to the senses with that touch of home and cinnamon giving it a seeming exotic taste no matter the origin.

Raine, for her part, practically had stars in her eyes with how fixated she’d become on the loaf.

“Ooh, that’s a good choice. I think you’ll like this one. Gregorio, I trust you have a suitable drink prepared?” Prismatia grinned, raising an eyebrow at the chef.

It was too late.

Before he could respond, the seemingly ravenous or insatiable kitsune had taken an offered bread slice and chomped into it. “This is shooooo goo— gaguuf,” she said.

What happened to her face should’ve been studied by behavioralist for future generations. First, there was a glory, a joy on her face as she bit into the bread, greatly enjoying it even if not quite as much as the pho. Then on the second bite her expression went so confused, eyebrows raising and ears going straight up as she picked up something was clearly wrong. Then, panic and pain as her skin flushed and tears beaded.

“Whacht thaq fucqt iz dis? Whyeee ish it sho hotttt!?” Raine asked, spitting out the half eaten bite of the cinnamon bread slice into a napkin before panting.

“Ah, I suppose cinnamon would be less spicy where you’re from. You see,  there was a massive incident with a while back where enough people believed cinnamon was spicy and some said so in English enough that it... became so. Half the damn cultivars started producing capsaicin in their bark.” Prismatia scratched her head ruefully. Still, Raine’s flustered, panicked expression had been quite adorable. “Gregorio, please fetch the young lady some milk.”

Raine, for her part, looked positively miserable. She was panting, her eyes were watering, her ears were folded, and she’d begun alternating between holding her tail and gripping the table as she squirmed in sensory induced pain.

Eventually, although it must have felt like an eternity for poor Raine, Gregorio returned with cup of milk in hand. Gregorio, for his part, looked concerned if not full on worried at the reaction in Raine to cinnamon bread, of all things.

“Ah, poor dear. Are you quite alright, Miss Raine?” Prismatia asked, looking at her with concern.

Raine drained the entire cup of milk in one drought, leaving a little milk moustache around her lips. She gasped out a breath a moment later, looking flustered but a bit better. “That…what? I’ve had cinnamon bread. I’ve had hot peppers, even habaneros. That was hotter than anything I’ve had in my life. What, what even gives? It’s like my tolerance for heat is gone.”

“That’s cause it probably is. Perks of the new body or what have you— or maybe it’s something to do with the spiciness of cinnamon being magically enforced?” Prismatia shrugged.

Raine groaned and held her head in her hands. “Just great. I took pride in my heat tolerance. I wasn’t crazy but I knew it and I knew my limits. Now I gotta build it all back up, on top of things like freaking cinnamon biting worse than my world’s cinnamon.”

“There are some cultivars of cinnamon that were unaffected, and cassia cinnamon is unaffected because that stuff isn’t real cinnamon?” Prismatia offered, holding back a desire to pat the poor fox’s head.

Raine’s ears, folded, slowly returned to their usual alert positions and did look awfully adorable…

And then a Kobold teleported in, the short lizard-man saluting her. “Boss lady, we got trouble again.”

“What is it, Brick?” Prismatia asked, looking down at the little fella in his dry-cleaned suit.

“Some wise guy defaced the gates again. Art of the inappropriate variety, featuring...well, you know.” Brick scratched his chin, a bit embarrassed.

“Again? They know the rules about inappropriate art of faculty and other staff members.” Prismatia sighed, shaking her head. And she was having such a nice day, too. “Miss Raine—I have to go deal with this.”

“Oh, um, okay. I’ll head back to my room then after I’m finished eating,” Raine said. Then she straightened. “But wait, Prismatia? I can’t really speak to others right now. I don’t know more than a phrase or two, and, well, I don’t want to activate anymore wild magic than I already have…” the kitsune finished uncertainly.

“Hmmm... perhaps we could use some sort of written cards to let you respond to things, or a sign or some such?”  She scratched her head thoughtfully. “You could ask the ven—”

Raine, reacting to the word sign, rose to her feet and, without a single sign of shame, stole one of the menu signs off a restaurant’s wall. She brushed the menu itself away and wrote on it with a piece of chalk she’d also stolen to scribble a message on the board.

The handwriting in English was mildly atrocious, but readable.

“Hi, my name is Raine. I can’t speak Bussin just yet, and can only speak English. To avoid wild magic accidents, please don’t speak to me as I can’t really respond. Thanks! <3”

By writing this, she of course enchanted the mundane blackboard and the horrific handwriting began glowing as the world accepted it. Of. Course.

Raine smiled and held the sign out for Prismatia to see. The dragoness simply nodded and shot her a thumbs up— her focus elsewhere for a moment. They’d need to work on her handwriting, though.

“I’ll see you there, then. To continue our lessons?” She said, shooting Raine a smile as she extended her wings and flew off towards the front of the campus.

It didn’t take her long to reach the front gate at top speed... and sure enough, it was as bad as it looked. It was a full spread of her in a lurid pose, with just about nothing in the way of clothing and the proportions were exaggerated. Which was saying something, in her mind, given how generous her proportions already were.

It wasn’t hard to spot the miscreants as they weren’t hiding. In fact, they stood proud, a collection of three students she unfortunately recognized: a human, a half elf, and a half orc, standing off from a scowling Kobold maid with a bucket and sponges.

“Boys... you know the rules about sexualized depictions of staff and faculty,” She grinned viciously. ”Can you repeat those for me?”

The leader, one Mr. Leeroy Jenkins, withstood her glare while his cronies, Marley and Estevan, had the dignity to at least look embarrassed. “We regret nothing! Dragon Mommy! All deserve to know of your glory!” he shouted to the heavens. “I’m willing to suffer for my beliefs, and punishment from the grand dragon above all? I accept it, willingly!”

“...The rules, Mister Jenkins, are simple. First — if it’s for public display, keep the proportions accurate. Second, no Galatea-ing statuary without the consent of the depicted. Third— if it’s going to be in a public place, clear it with staff, particularly those depicted, first!” She growled, grabbing Jenkins by the collar of his robes and lifting him up.

“I’m ready! I knew the risks going in! The heretics say you aren’t the best, that the succubi are better, even the fae harlots! I reject them and raise you above all, DRAGON MOMMY!” Jenkins shouted.

Estevan rubbed his bald head. “Jenkins… even I think this is a little cringe at this point,” he said.

Marley coughed. “Quite. I admire the headmistress and agree with your points, but stated so vulgarly, it’s… well, I am full of regret.”

“The three of you will be helping the custodial staff clean keep the castle clean for the next month! Starting with this abomination and any and all statuary in public places! Yes, that includes the statue of your grandfather in the swimsuit, Jenkins.” Prismatia grinned, before tossing Jenkins into the moat to cool off.

The maid sighed as the remaining two went to help their idiot friend. “Great Dragon, is there a reason you haven’t eaten these three idiots? They aren’t wrong you are great, but…” the maid eeped suddenly. “Not that I mean to question you! I’m sure you have your own grand reasons and I’m going to shut up now,” she said, covering her muzzle.

“Eating them would just encourage other perverts, and if I were to do so I’d have eaten a solid portion of the student body for the past few centuries,” Prismatia shrugged. “Plus, there are some really good ones. Have you seen the one that’s displayed in the gardens, where they grew that vine with heart-shaped leaves over it strategically? Impressive work.”

Well, that was dealt with before it could get too far. She could tolerate a lot of things, but lewd imagery of herself on the castle’s gate was a touch too far. That said, she had a student to return to, and one far more interesting than this trio of aspiring artists.

~~~~

AN:

Kitsu: Foxxo approves! Because a foxxo likes foxxos doing foxxo things, and dragons being dragons.

It was really cute when Raine ate the cinnabread. Now hopefully one day this foxxo will be finnabred.

HiddenMaster: Kitsu knows what he just did.

But yeah, this was a fun chapter and Raine got to experience some of the fun parts of a new body.

BookDragon: Insert the “but that’s forbidden love!” meme here. That said, we hope you all like the worldbuilding that’s being slowly unveiled as these two build their friendship and eventual romance!

HiddenMaster: Anyway, if you wanna support us, check out our support links below or maybe check us out for our rates to commission a story of your own, eh?

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