<div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/q1lqYlR.png)</div><br/><em>"Tesszeik? Isn't tha...the name of the town also?"</em>Izusa asked, slightly confused.<br/><br/>The naga nodded her head,<strong> "This place used to just be called 'Tesszeik's farm' and as a few more people joined me to work the land here, it just got shortened.  If it makes it easier, People just call me Esszie for short." </strong>She smiled a somewhat friendly smile, though Izusa couldn't help but notice that the tip of the naga's tail was waving in the air rather sinuously.  A signal, or maybe just an unconscious reflex, she wasn't sure.  Still her own tail flicked as she explained how she'd been sent across the river.  Esszie straightened then and frowned slightly,<strong>"I'd like to cast a spell of truth and have you repeat that."</strong>When Izusa hesitated the naga said in a very stern tone,<strong>"Or invite you to leave this place immediately."</strong><br/><br/>Faced with such a choice Izusa nodded her head in agreement.  The naga waved her fingers in the air in a complex pattern and muttered the words to a spell before, with intense concentration on Izusa's face said,<strong>"Please repeat your statement, exactly, so I know if you're telling the truth or not."</strong>Izusa did, trying to remember the exact wording on what she'd said.  But apparently the naga was satisfied and the look of concentration faded from her face.  She dusted soil from her hands before wiping them off on her long shirt that seemed to double as a dress and nodded her head.  "Ok, you're telling the truth.  Would you like to come inside for some tea and we can talk."<br/><br/>Izusa nodded, feeling that the almost matronly looking naga seemed trustworthy enough.  What she'd expected inside the home may or may not have been a disappointment as it looked much like any comfortable home that she'd ever seen.  Perfectly normal in almost any respect save that there was a bit more space between furniture than in a normal house, no doubt due to the way the naga moved along the ground, her snake body slithering back and forth.  Esszie gestured to the couch in the living room as she stayed in the kitchen, open space between the two letting them talk as the naga pumped water into a worn but clean kettle and put it on an iron stove.  "We don't get many exiles this far south.  You're the third in the last twenty years.  However in the same time I've had three times that many bounty hunters or fortune seekers come through."<br/><br/>She clucked her tongue, "I guess four centuries of peace has finally made the mortals a lot less scared of what happens on this side of the river eh?"  She cocked her head slightly and looked at Izusa, "Truth be told however I never would have guessed that you were from the mortal realms, looking like you do.  By the look of you, you've got a touch of monster blood in you, beastkin, eh?"  She looked away suddenly as the teapot began to whistle and slithered back over to pour the hot water into a tea kettle, adding a silver ball filled with tea leaves and setting it on a tea service tray of worn silver that looked like it needed a polishing.<br/><br/>Slithering over to where Izusa sat she set the service down and began pouring tea into two teacups asking "How do you take it sweetling?  Cream, sugar, neither?"<br/><br/>Izusa answered,<em> "Both please, sugar and cream. Sweet stuff is the best." </em>She added that second part rather sheepishly.<br/><br/>Esszie simply smiled and dropped a sugar cube into each tea cup.  Then directly in front of her, the naga began unbuttoning the neckline of her shirt.  Izusa wasn't sure why until the naga pulled the shirt neck line open enough to expose one of her rather large breasts capped with pale pink nipple and leaned over the cups.  Squeezing her breast and pinching the nipple she squirted a thin stream of thick cream from her teat expertly splashing it into the tea cup.  Twice more she repeated before replacing her breast and then exposing the other one and repeating the triple squeeze and pinch into her own cup.  Replacing her breast, she did up two of the four buttons, so as to mostly hide her breasts but leaving a bit of cleavage on display, she picked up her cup and slithered back to a large armless chair and settling down into it.  Most of her snakelike body slid off the chair and onto the floor, but she looked quite comfortable as she lifted the teacup to her lips and blew on it before taking a sip and letting out a soft<strong>'mmmmm'.</strong><br/><br/>Izusa realized that she had only a moment or two to decide if she was going to do likewise, and to reject the tea might be offensive.... but a naga's breast milk?  She'd never considered...<br/><br/><strong>"So, you're a criminal then?  Need to know how to survive in the lawless and horrible lands that the evil Pandora controls?  I'm guessing you heard we all eat babies, murder for at the drop of the hat, and fornicate wildly and without any cause or reason?"</strong>The tinge of her voice showed how ridiculous these biases were in her mind. And in fairness,  Izusa had heard rumors of the terrible pandora lands where monster girls did do eactly things like that.  Still it wouldn't be political to say that.  She needed to be careful about what she said and did here if she wanted to avoid offending.