Finding What's Eternal
Chapter 1
Alys stared at the rabbit Selendrile was holding out to her, her mind completely blank. She shifted her gaze up to Selendrile, who stood there, more or less patiently, waiting for Alys to respond. Her gaze fell back down to the limp body of the rabbit before she finally managed to blurt out, "It's not alive."
"Yes, well it was, but I figured if I gave you a live one you'd do something insensible such as remark on it's general appearance and undoubtedly end up releasing it," Selendrile replied, in a tone that was matter of fact.
Alys blinked at him. Well, holding out a dead rabbit to her certainly hadn't kept her from remarking on it's general appearance. Though, perhaps not in the same way she would have had it been alive. Selendrile gave the rabbit a little shake, indicating his impatience. Alys cleared her throat and set down her messy attempt at a half-weaved basket, turning on her rock perch a little to face him. "You know, when people give gifts to each other as a sign of good faith and friendship, they typically pick things other than dead animals," she finally settled on saying.
Selendrile frowned at her, taking her hand and forcing the rabbit he had been scruffing into it. Alys yelped and promptly dropped it, the little rabbit sliding off her rock and onto the slightly smaller rocks below. Both Selendrile and Alys stared at it for a little before slowly looking back up at each other.
On her perch on the rock outcrop their eyes were on the same level, though in the rapidly fading light Alys was beginning to have trouble making out his expressions. She really shouldn't have stayed out here so long. It was much safer for her to make her way to their cave while it was still daylight out, especially given the fact that her 'path' down the mountain side, which in her opinion was bordering on a cliff, was more or less just a slightly more clear way through the rocks.
When she had first agreed to live with Selendrile they had continued traveling around for awhile. He had evaded answering questions about where they were going, and Alys suspected that this was more due to the fact they didn't actually have a destination than due to the fact he didn't want to share it. Finally after a couple weeks of aimless travel Selendrile apparently made up his mind about where they were going and finally led Alys to this cave. When she first glimpsed the mountainside she had been understandably confused as to where they were headed and demanded that Selendrile either fly her over the mountain or let them walk around it, stating that it was cruel to force her to climb up such a steep and rocky mountain side, at night of course, just because it struck his fancy. Selendrile had only laughed and informed her that she was free to do as she pleased, but she was never going to end up where he was headed if she tried walking around. After several hours of her stumbling, tripping, and knocking various body parts into rocks- oh and, nearly skidding down the mountain side a few times or two, they finally reached the cave entrance. Alys had stared at Selendrile incredulously when they reached it, his intent finally dawning on her, and Selendrile once again just laughed at her.
It turned out however that the cave really was a fairly good living arrangement for the both of them. This no doubt was due to Selendrile having picked it once Alys had joined him, a fact which she couldn't prove but strongly suspected, and she had been touched at how much he had taken her human needs into consideration when picking them a 'housing' arrangement. Even the darn path up the mountain had been a calculated benefit, for it was quite hard to recognize and its destination, the cave, was rather difficult to see even in the daylight. The following night Selendrile had found her wandering through the rocks nearly crying from exhaustion and frustration at being lost for hours on end, and when he had made an amused comment on her current state she had snapped at him that it was all his fault for picking such a stupid hard to find cave. It was then that Selendrile pointed out living in a place that was hard to see and access was good for both of their safeties an offered to help her figure out the path. It took several trips up and down the mountain together for Alys to finally figure out how to find her way from the base to the cave, and a full week's worth of effort. But even now she had difficulty at night sometimes and preferred to make her trips up and down during the day.
Today however, she had been distracted by her sad attempts at basket weaving, and once she realized the sun was setting had been unable to tear herself away from her wonderful view. It was only now as Selendrile faced her and she was unable to read his expression that she realized perhaps staying out on the rock ledge so late had been a poor idea. Even if her only reason for regretting it was that she couldn't read the dragon youth's emotions at her dropping his gift on the ground. Oh and, the trip back to his cave in complete darkness without a torch.
"It's not a sign of friendship or good faith. It's a sign that you need to start learning how to prepare your own food. It's a nuisance to steal you food all the time," he finally replied.
"But I don't know how to prepare food from that," Alys protested, pointing down at the rabbit.
"Are you saying you didn't prepare your own food when living with your father?"
Alys crossed her arms across her chest at his judgmental tone. "Of course I did! But the butcher was the one that handled it when it still looked like that," she said once again indicating at the rabbit. "Besides," she said her indignation rapidly fading into embarrassment, "we couldn't afford meat all that often. Not fresh meat at least."
"It's easiest if you just eat it when it's alive," Selendrile supplied pleasantly. Alys blew air out her nose forcefully in irritation at his none-too-helpful suggestion. "It's only been dead for a little, perhaps if you just eat it now…"
"Ew!" Alys screeched waving her arms in front of her, as if fending off the idea.
Selendrile shrugged, but she had a distinct feeling he was pleased at himself to have elicited such a response. "Well, if you insist on eating it that disgusting way you humans seem fond of, I did bring you back some tools."
Alys stared forlornly down at the rabbit. "Must I eat it?" she asked dejectedly, already knowing the response.
"If you want food tonight."
And there it was. Alys sighed and picked up her basket which was slowly expanding outwards on one side, before sliding off the rock and gingerly picking up the rabbit by a hind foot. She imagined it hopping happily through a field of flowers, stopping to sniff the ground with it's little nose, before twitching it's ears and hopping on. And then a dragon swooped down to end it's happy little blissful existence. And now she was going to eat it. Alys shuddered. Oh, the joys of fending for oneself. Well, sort of fending for oneself.
Selendrile nodded when she stood up to face him and began leading the way back towards the cave. The distance wasn't far, but they had to go slowly for her in the poor light and eventually, when the last of the sunlight had completely faded away, Alys had shifted her basket under one arm and held onto the back of Selendrile's shirt for efficiencies sake. When they reached the entrance of the cave they veered off into the opening to the left that served as Alys room. Selendrile had claimed the rest of the small cave for his personal sleeping quarters.
Selendrile led his way across her room to the fire pit, which was near the back wall and placed just slightly off from being under an opening in the ceiling, which at the moment revealed the twinkling stars in the sky. Its placement allowed for a nearly all the smoke to directly head out of the cave, but also allowed the fire to exist in less than ideal weather conditions. He knelt and struck her pieces of flint together, effortlessly catching the kindling on fire and began skillfully arranging the wood. Alys eyed him jealously, wondering if being a dragon inherently made one good at handling fire, no matter where it originated from. She certainly never got a fire going that effortlessly regardless of how much experience she had with them.
Once Selendrile was satisfied with the progress of his fire he stood up and headed away, presumably to fetch some of her torches, which were placed strategically around her little cave room. In the meantime Alys examined the little pile of things he had brought back for her: a hammer, what appeared to be a giant nail, some rope, a couple knives, a new cutting board, supplies for making new torches and a few vegetables- not enough to make three meals worth though. Selendrile came back and knelt by the fire to light the two torches he was holding, and then headed back to place them into the rock walls where they typically resided. Alys' eyes followed him until he was a safe distance away before she sneaked over to the large basket where she stored her extra food supplies. She nudged the lid open with her foot and peered in. The usual stock of bread and cheese were missing, as were all the other extra vegetables and fruit, save a single apple. Tricky dragon. Alys let the lid drop down quietly before turning to glare at Selendrile, finding him by the fire now, eyeing her innocently. Ha! Like that was going to work on her.
Selendrile hummed a few short lines of a folk song children in her town often sang as he picked up the hammer and large nail and began slowly walking around her room surveying the area. Where had he learned that? Alys wondered watching him. Her cheeks suddenly went hot when she realized she had been singing it a day or two before during the afternoon when she assumed he was sound asleep. Only, apparently, he hadn't been. Oh no, he hadn't been and was letting her know. And if his rendition of those few short lines was any indication, she had sung it slightly off key—she seriously doubted any flaws in his humming were due to his own fault. Drat, drat, drat, Alys thought chewing on the side of her lip.
When she finally glanced back up, Selendrile had found the location he was looking for in the far corner of her room and was currently wedging the large nail into the low hanging ceiling. Alys hurried over to where he stood and glanced up at the nail. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Well, you need somewhere to hang the animal don't you? At least butchers always do," he replied mildly as he pounded the nail into a crevice between two fallen rocks that composed the ceiling in this corner. Alys winced as a few pebbles fell down, but when she looked back up Selendrile was tugging at the nail which was now securely in the fully intact ceiling. With a satisfied nod he turned and handed her the hammer. He observed her for a second before turning back to his creation.
"It's not far from the fire, but a good distance away from where you sleep," he said indicating to the pile of animal pelts that composed her bed, which rested on the opposite side of the fire, along the side wall, closer in to the center of her room. The nail on the other hand, was in on the corner of the other side wall and the back wall, which happened to be the wall farthest from the entrance. Alys nodded and Selendrile continued, "and the ground drops away some here, and if you were to say pour a bucket of water on the ground here to clean the area, the water would naturally flow out of the room down those." He pointed to the holes in the jumble of rocks that composed this corner of the room.
When Alys had first moved into this cave room she had been highly suspicious of this corner, which she could just envision crumbling and trapping her while the rest of her little cave room stayed perfectly intact. As a result, she had typically avoided this corner. Perhaps the suspicious corner had had it's advantages all along. "Hmm," she allowed, still chewing on the side of her lip.
Selendrile narrowed his eyes at her slightly, clearly not impressed with her lack of enthusiasm. As he stalked back over to the fire to fetch the rabbit and other supplies Alys quickly made a face at his unsuspecting back. Well, he clearly had known she wasn't going to like this or he wouldn't have confiscated all her other food rations. He had no right to get annoyed with her for responding exactly the way he had expected! Selendrile promptly returned and stuffed the rabbit back into Alys hands, along with a knife. Alys had to fight the urge to immediately toss the rabbit away from her. The thought of dropping the hammer and knife accidentally on her own feet in the process was about the only thing that kept her from carrying out the impulse. She eyed him warily as he secured one end of the rope to the nail, realizing that the time for her to actually participate was rapidly approaching. "I doubt I'll be able to reach that," Alys complained.
Selendrile grabbed the rabbit from her arms and went to tying the lose end of the rope around it's hind foot. "Not a problem," he replied cheerfully enough, "We can leave that end of the rope tied for you. Besides, I bet you can reach it if you stand on your toes." He turned to survey her, presumably comparing her height and arm length to his own. Which, Alys thought, even he had to admit was a decent bit taller. Alys wasn't exactly tall for a girl, and Selendrile, being a perfect dragon youth in human form, was an impressive model of the male gender. Which included a decent amount of height. And muscle. And good looks. And beautiful eyes….
Alys realized that her expression must be dangerously close to pouting over the fact that her rejection had been a failure and did not in fact, delay the inevitable, and with effort took a deep breath, straightening her face out. Selendrile gave her a faint smile and indicated at the knife in her hand. "Go ahead." With that he put his hand on her back and gave her a little push in the direction of the rabbit.
Alys looked sadly down at the knife before heaving a sigh and bending down to finally set the hammer down. She stood back up and lifted the knife up near the rabbit before freezing. She had absolutely no idea what to do. "Uhhhh…." She said turning to look at Selendrile with an uncomfortable half smile. Or maybe it was a grimace. She couldn't quite tell. Selendrile only managed to look annoyed for a brief second before he started chuckling at her again, reaching around her to grab the knife she was still holding up and waving her away with his other hand.
He certainly wasn't as efficient at it as he could have been, pausing every once in awhile for a few seconds to ponder what to do next, but he definitely achieved results—which was something Alys couldn't say for herself. Every once in awhile he would step back and hand her the knife, with a little shove towards the rabbit, and Alys would make a pathetic attempt at the process, before Selendrile got annoyed and shooed her away again to show her how to do it. Or at least, how he would do it, which may or may not have been the way butchers would have done it. Alys wasn't entirely sure. That's pretty much how the entire process went right up until when Alys actually had to attempt cooking it, at which point she was so frustrated that she took her anger out on innocent vegetables on her now deemed 'Non-meat' cutting board. This earned her an amused comment from Selendrile, which earned him a snappy, perhaps slightly rude response. This was followed by some degrading comments directed at the vegetables too.
Finally Alys was able to dump a more or less edible cooked meal onto one of her wooden plates. She went over to Selendrile and plopped down beside him on top of her bed, smiling proudly down at her plate. Selendrile leaned over to sniff her plate. "It smells terrible, you sure that's edible?"
Alys's content smile slid off her face instantly. She took a piece of carrot out and flicked it at his face. "I'd like to see you do better!" she huffed, before turning back to her plate.
"No thank you," Selendrile replied good naturedly, leaning back to stretch out on her bed. Alys eyed him, as he lay there peacefully. Now that she actually had some food, granted a good hour or two after she normally had it, her annoyance had quickly faded and she was able to look back on the evening with a more or less unbiased view. She really was lucky that he seemed to find her so amusing. She could easily see how if she treated another male the way she treated Selendrile, she may wind up regretting it. She could even see things going horribly awry with Selendrile if she had treated him this way when she first met him. But for the most part Selendrile seemed to enjoy her temper, nearly as much as he liked making her uncomfortable, or feel silly. He also seemed to generally enjoy their occasional bouts of bickering. In fact, Alys strongly suspected he purposely baited her into most of these situations; perhaps part of being a mighty dragon involved a certain satisfaction in messing with humans. But maybe, she wondered, she enjoyed this nearly as much as he did? One of Selendrile's eyes popped open. "Yes?"
"Nothing," Alys muttered quickly turning back to her plate. She stuffed a large chunk of her food into her mouth and started chewing with gusto. But once she was actually able to taste it her chewing pace slowed down considerably.
"Not as tasty as you had hoped?" Selendrile asked, sounding a little too serious and uninterested. Alys glared at him, and continued chewing.
"That's not the case at all," she assured him after she swallowed. She turned back to her plate, only pausing for a second to look down at it disdainfully, before stuffing the next portion into her mouth. Okay, she admitted to herself, so she didn't completely know how to cook with these new foods and spices Selendrile brought her from presumably larger towns. But that didn't mean she wasn't a decent cook! She did perfectly fine when she was working with the cheap, easily accessed basics. She just needed a little more practice with these fancier foods. Not, that she would ever admit this to Selendrile. No, it's best not to show such a weakness to him, lest he decide to capitalize on it. After a few more bites a thought occurred to her. "Selendrile, you're not going to bring back larger animals are you?"
"I don't see why not."
"But… how am I going to keep fresh meat from going bad until I can eat it all? You wouldn't eat what I don't use since it's not alive anymore, would you?"
Selendrile pondered this for a little while Alys continued eating. "In the very back of the cave is a spot that's quite cool. We could store the rest of the meat there and with the help of some salt…" he trailed off and shrugged.
"In the back of the cave?" Alys asked, only her mouth was full of food so it came out sounding more like "In da bahhhk uh da caah?" She swallowed the food before continuing once she saw the look Selendrile gave her. "But I'll probably have to get some during the day at times, and if you're sleeping in the other room…" She trailed off, tilting her head to the side as she realized that she was now referring to parts of caves as rooms. How things had changed.
"It's alright, I'm used to you now. I can sleep through you walking past me as long as you don't do anything unusual."
"Define unusual."
"Pulling my tail. Sticking smelly things under my nose. Make any strange noises particularly those of other animals."
"How old do you think I am?" Alys asked flatly.
Selendrile answered the question by blinking. Alys wasn't sure if that response was a comment on her perceived maturity, his interpretation of human ages or if maybe, just maybe, he had made a joke and she was the one missing a joke for once. "Come on I'll show you," he said standing up abruptly. Alys stared up at him, mouth full of food, surprised by his sudden movement.
"Neeh-oow?" she managed.
Selendrile frowned down at her. "I don't recall very many other young ladies talking with their mouths full in front of me whenever we were in towns."
"Ha! That's just because they all were trying to look their best for you! I know better!"
Selendrile's reply to that apparently was to just walk away. "Grab one of those extra sheets and the rabbit," he called out.
Alys paused for a fraction of a second before dropping her plate down and scrambling to grab what he had told her to before she lost track of him. By the time she had caught up with him he was mostly through the part of the cave he slept in with a torch in his hand. He led her past it and led her through a narrow crack in the wall, barely wide enough to fit two people across, that Alys had never noticed existing before. It finally opened up a little in tiny cave. He led her up the side of it by means of a ramp like side and into a hole in the wall close to the ceiling. This room opened up in what looked like a mini low ceilinged cavern, which was notably cooler than the rest of the cave. He paused here, so Alys set the folded sheet on the ground and placed the leftovers of the rabbit down on top.
Selendrile nodded and turned to leave. As they headed out Selendrile rather excitedly asked, "So what are we doing today? Basket weaving? You make the most interesting shapes with your baskets."