We arrived at the blue cow just as the sun was beginning to set. The building was larger than most of the buildings in the area, and there was a large sign above the door that read: 'The Blue Cow'.
"Here it is!" Barbara said excitedly as we looked up at the building. She opened the door and we all followed her inside.
We entered a room filled with tables, and people sat at them eating and drinking. For this kind of establishment, you would expect most of the customers to be drinking alcohol, but since mostly students lived in this town they were drinking pints of milk.
'I guess that's where the name comes from?" I thought as we walked up to the woman at the bar serving customers.
"What can I get ya?" The woman asked merrily. The first thing I noticed was that she had big… She was well endowed. Her hair was a strange pattern of white with black spots, and she had two small horns sticking out from the top. Her ears were long and drooped slightly from her earrings' weight. I could guess her animal was a cow just from looking at her.
"We would like to get three rooms for the night and a meal for tonight and in the morning." Coyle requested.
"I'm sorry we only have two rooms available at the moment, but one of them does have two single beds. Will that be ok?" The cow woman asked apologetically.
"That should be fine." Coyle sighed and then turned to Barbara and me. "Kate you can sleep on your own. I would let you sleep with Barbara, but she has a habit of entering other people's dreams when she sleeps. I'm used to it, but it can be quite freighting the first time."
Barbara's face went bright red. "Hey, that hasn't happened in ages." She said meekly trying to cover her face.
"Great here are the keys, there are room numbers on each key." The cow woman explained as she handed over two keys to Coyle. "Now yawl said something about getting something to eat, right? Why don't you sit at a table and look over the menu? I'll come and grab your order in a couple of minutes."
We sat at one of the tables and began to look through the menu. All the dishes seemed to be pretty standard for this kind of place. There was everything from sandwiches to pasta, but what intrigued me more was the section labelled 'Special drinks'. They were all the same as the other drinks, but they all had weird names like Blue's milk or Blue's coffee and were all dairy products.
After we looked through the menu and decided what we were going to eat, the cow woman came up to our table. She had a notepad in hand prepared to take our order. "Decided yet?"
"Can I have the barbecue steak with a cola, please?" Coyle answered first.
"You sure can." the cow woman said marking it down on her notepad.
Barbara made her request next. "And I will have the chicken sandwich with some orange juice."
"And what will you be having, miss?" The cow woman asked me as I took one last glance at the menu.
"Can I have the jacket potato with tuna, beans and cheese? Also, can I also have one of the special drinks, you can choose which one?" I wasn't very hungry, so I ordered something light, and my curiosity was more focused on the special drinks.
The cow woman smiled at me when she heard me mention the special drinks. "Do any of you have any allergies or food preferences, I need to know about?" She asked, and we all shook our heads.
"Your meals should be ready within the next half an hour, and I will be back with your drinks in a few minutes." The cow woman winked at me when she talked about the drinks and it made me slightly nervous.
'What kind of drinks are the special drinks?' I thought as we waited for our drinks.
The cow woman went into the back room, and a couple of minutes later she returned with the drinks. Her face was slightly blushing and had a wide smile on her face. She set down our drinks and then began to explain my drink. "This is our Blue's blueberry milkshake, it's my personal favourite."
The glass was quite tall and it had a milky blue liquid inside. On top, there was whipped cream and blueberries surrounding a straw. I took my first sip from the straw and was instantly amazed. It was creamy and milky, but it didn't feel overpowering from the blueberry taste, and it all felt extremely fresh.
After satisfying my taste, I decided to satisfy my curiosity. "Why is it called Blue's blueberry milkshake?" I asked before taking another sip.
The cow woman looked at me confused. "Well, my name is Blue and the milk I used to make the milkshake came from me."
When I heard those words I began to choke a little on the milk I was sipping. In the corner of my eye, I could see Barbara with a massive smirch on her face. 'She knew!' I shouted in my head.
"So you are saying that the milk came from you?" I asked nervously after I stopped choking.
"Yep, it came from here!" She said happily poking her breast. "If you're worried about it being pasteurised, I got a mage to make me a machine to do that quickly. It's safe to drink, and you can't get anything fresher."
I still had a look of repulsion on my face when she explained everything, and Blue started to panic a little. "Do you not like it?"
"No, I like it. It's actually really good, better than anything I have had before. I'm just not used to drinking milk from a person before."
Blue let out a sigh of relief. "Most people on this island have tried or at least heard of hybrid cow milk. Are you from one of the different islands in the mystic isles?"
"No actually, I only discovered I was a hybrid recently."
"Seriously?! That means you have lived in the outside world. What was it like? How do the people talk? How do the houses look? If they don't use magic what do they do most of the time?"
I was stunned by Blue's enthusiasm for the outside world. In my opinion, this was a much more fascinating place to live.
"Sorry if I'm annoying you." Blue apologised after realising she had bombarded me with questions. "I've always wanted to explore the outside world, but I ended up failing the academy's test, so I can't leave without permission from the council."
"It's fine, I don't mind answering any questions you have." After I said that Blue grabbed an extra chair and brought it to our table. There weren't many customers, and two other employees were attending to them.
Blue stayed and talked with us for the next few hours. We mostly talked about mostly my life and what life outside was like, but I did learn about her. The blue cow was a family-run business, and Blue had changed the name of the inn and rebranded it as a place for students to stay after her mother left for the outside world. Blue had always shared her mother's ambition of leaving Therian island and exploring the world.
We talked a lot, and our conversation only ended because Coyle wanted to go to bed. I felt refreshed after talking to Blue. It was always lovely to see a friendly face, and the conversation distracted me from the fact this was my first night away from home.
When my head hit the pillow, I quickly entered the land of dreams after the tiring day of walking around and looking at houses.
"Shit, it happened again." I heard a voice ring in my ears as I closed my eyes for the final time.