Queen of the Slipstream
Dragon Quest VIII flash fiction
by
Ro Anshi
Jessica soars through the blueness of the sky, feather-light, unburdened by the twin onuses of avenging her brother while saving the world. She flies unaided by the lift of Empyrea's wings, or by the enchantment of the Godbird's Soulstone; rather, she wafts herself toward the heavens carried by nothing more than the breeze, then swift as a swallow dives and darts effortlessly through the air.
She catches an updraft, soaring past a kestrel to streak through a sunbeam that paints her gold. She's warm, weightless, untroubled…
Free.
Jessica awakens with a start to an odd sound she's not quite sure she actually heard, to hard ground beneath her body and the grey ashes of a fading campfire before her. The already-dim starlight has vanished behind gathering clouds. Rain later today. A light mist is touching her face, weighting her lashes with something too much like tears.
It's Angelo who is sitting guard tonight, cross-legged on the ground across from the banked fire. His red cloak, by night darker than blood, covers both shoulders, although his uniform jacket is unfastened, as are the top two buttons of the blindingly white shirt beneath it. Bare-handed for once, he's fiddling with a deck of cards, and it must be the rhythmic slap-slap-slap of pasteboard as he practices his shuffling that has awakened her.
She glowers at him until he finally feels her stare and looks up. "I didn't wake you, did I?" His eyes are wide, his tone ingenuous.
She wants to "hmph" her general displeasure at him and then dramatically turn away, roll over, and return to sleep. Instead, she simply shakes her head, and sighs.
The look in his eyes changes—quizzical? Curious? No, concerned. "A bad dream then?" he persists, as the deck of cards vanishes into a pocket and he leans toward her.
"I don't know." She tries to remember, recapture a rapidly-fading sensation. "Not… bad," she finally manages. A sudden wind gusts, disarranging her hair and her clothes—and her blanket—as it ripples over her, and just for an instant she feels borne up, feather-light again. And then the feeling is gone. "Just… a dream, I guess," she finishes, strangely disappointed
Angelo reaches out, shifting close enough to capture and rearrange her errant blanket. Normally she would protest his attention, but she's too sore, too tired, too damp, too disoriented to care to make a fuss right now. Besides, we don't want to wake Eight or Yangus and the others—again—if we have words in the middle of the night.
Angelo's hands, when they accidently brush against her—and for once, she's convinced that he's not faking the coincidence of his touch—are surprisingly warm, and she absently wonders how delicious deliberate contact might feel. But sleep is hovering too close for her to continue that line of thought.
Angelo's voice is surprisingly gentle. "Go back to sleep, Jessica." She wants to ask him just what he's smiling at, why he's giving her a look that on anyone else she'd call "fond," but those questions are just going to have to wait until morning.
When she closes her eyes, Jessica is flying again.
fin