DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters. I'm just having fun and I'm not making a £ out of this.
I recently finished Dragons of a Vanished Moon and couldn't help but write this. Heck, I'd been wanting to write this ever since The Dawning of a New Age, to tell the truth.
I love Kit and Skie and the amount of devotion and romantic feeling the dragon has for his companion, even if only partially requited is heartrendingly sweet. I mean, she sleeps with anybody but him, but he still loves her enough to try to be reunited with her for how long?
This is basically wishful thinking on how their relationship should develop when they are finally reunited in the afterlife.
WARNINGS:Spoilers for DoVM.
Implied sex. I tried to keep it tasteful, but still... Could be considered bestiality by some, even if Skie is temporarily human.
Khellendros woke up in a strangely blurred and bright place. He felt rather numb and boneless, but there was no pain, only peace.
He remembered dying, struggling for a last breath with which to defy his enemy one last time, but above all he remembered that Kitiara had been at his side in his final moments. He had heard her voice, felt her touch as in the days of old. If not for her, he wouldn't have been able to enact his last defiance. Oh, how he had missed her in the years they had spent apart, divided by the boundaries that separated the living and the dead, but now he was dead as well and, if there was any justice in the world, they would be together in the afterlife.
"Kitiara…" he called out, his voice still weak and shaky, and immediately she appeared in his field of vision, brown eyes sparkling, curly hair tousled and a lopsided smile on her face. Khellendros had never thought himself an expert in human aesthetics, but she looked so very beautiful to him. He felt himself smile like an idiot and his heart clenched in a sweet sort of pain.
Lost as he was in blissful contemplation, it took him several moments to notice that he was perceiving the scene from a rather strange perspective. Weird, he thought to himself, it looked as if he was lying down on his back and her face was somehow hovering slightly above him. The only trouble was that he couldn't have easily lain on his back as his wings would have hurt as hell, but he was feeling no pain.
He raised one of his paws and gasped in shock and surprise as a human arm and hand entered his field of view. Instinctively, he thought about flexing his talons and the extraneous hand responded, fingers curling in a fist. Khellendros blinked repeatedly, feeling very disoriented. Apparently, he had assumed a human shape, for some reason, even if he had very seldom done that in life.
Kitiara's smile widened and softened somehow at his discomfort.
"What… what happened, Kit? - he asked - Where are we? Why did I shift into a human shape?" He continued, wincing inwardly at how confused and pathetic he sounded even to himself.
"I do not know where we are, exactly, my Blue. I call this place Cotton-Wool Fields, since it looks slightly fuzzy and white. – she replied gently – I guess it is some sort of afterlife. It is probably home for us, now." she added and Khellendros felt a jolt of happiness coursing through his whole being at her use of the plural pronoun.
"As for why you are currently human, - she continued – I guess this is partially my fault. – she explained grinning naughtily – You see, in this place we exist merely as souls. It is our mind that imagines a shape for us to inhabit and while you were still trying to come round… Well, let's say I gave you a nudge in the right direction." she concluded.
"Why did you want me to look human for you, Kit?" he asked, struggling to sit up. He was not used to inhabiting a human body and moving took quite a lot of concentration, which was hard to obtain since the situation was so out of the ordinary.
Kitiara looked amused by his efforts and forced him to lie down again by placing a hand on his chest and pushing gently. Slightly confused, he obliged her, lying back again.
"It is only for now, my lovely Blue, just to humour me for a while. – she reassured him – Later you can return to your usual shape and we can fly to our heart's content, but there is something I want to do first." she explained and her hands alighted on his face, stroking his features gently. Her touch was feather-light, but it felt so very good and intense. He had always enjoyed her touch very much and, to tell the whole truth, if both of them hadn't had a fearsome reputation to maintain, he would have let her pet him until he purred like a bloody overgrown cat; momentarily inhabiting a human body just made the whole experience even more mind-blowingly intense. Khellendros finally realised that the soft skin of humans, which he had always deemed as a great weakness, had some advantages after all, if only for being so exquisitely sensitive.
His eyes had closed of their own accord, while he basked in the feeling, and Khellendros struggled to focus enough to open them again, but the sight that met them was reward enough for his effort.
Kitiara was staring at him in raptly, her eyes darker and almost unfocused, her red lips slightly parted, her chest rising and falling with her rapid respiration. For some reason this, however slightly alarming, made her look even more beautiful.
"Kit… Is everything alright?" he managed to ask breathily. She nodded, biting her lower lip.
"D-Do you like this?" he asked again, stuttering, as her hands roamed down, slipping under whatever garment he happened to be wearing, kneading his shoulders and caressing his chest. His breath hitched in his throat and he closed his eyes again, arching into her touch, as his body awakened in ways that were at the same time familiar and alien to him.
"I like this very much, Skie. Do you?" she asked, stroking some part of his newfound human anatomy that he didn't know how to define, but that felt absolutely heavenly. "Yesss…" he hissed between clenched teeth.
"Good…" she whispered, repeating the motion as if giving him a reward for a correct answer and letting her hands slide even further down, brushing another part of his anatomy, one that he could name and that he had never imagined she would ever touch on purpose.
His eyes flew open and he grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand away from him.
"Kit, I… Are you… Do you want to…" he rasped unable to form a coherent sentence.
She froze. "You don't want me to?" she asked.
Khellendros shook his head with vehemence. "I love you. – he blurted out, feeling heat creep up over his skin – But you don't have to… to mate with me. – he finally managed to say - It is enough that you are with me again: my companion, my other half." he added truthfully. Kitiara remained silent, looking at him with an odd intensity.
"Is it because of this shape? – he asked, just to break that awful silence – Do you like it so much?" Khellendros knew that Kitiara mated casually, just when it struck his fancy or when she felt the need. There was nothing wrong with it, he did exactly the same, especially when the frustration at being hers and not became too much to bear. He had always been the only male in her life with whom she had never mated and even if it was maddening, sometimes, he felt as if it put him on a different level from all those others. It was almost as if by mating with him now, she would lessen their bond, making him just one among the many.
Kitiara shook her head. "It is the shape I remember you wearing when you collected me after I won the drinking contest in Sanction and passed out: black-blue curls and golden eyes. – she replied – It is pleasing enough, but it is not that what I like. – she added - I like you. Your soul and whatever shape you happen to inhabit. You are the only person who really understands me, who doesn't want anything from me except my companionship and affection, who can accept me whole, without guilt and regrets, who never gave up on me. You said it yourself, - she continued, never looking away from his eyes – I am your other half and you mine. This is why I want you, Skie."
Khellendros had cried only twice before in his life, once with Kitiara when his daughter Zephyr, who had been Kitiara's first dragon, and his first rider Kartilann both died on the same day, and the second when the portals had closed after the War with Chaos and he realised that he might never see Kitiara again, his two moments of bleakest despair. He had never imagined that anyone could weep out of overwhelming joy, but it was happening to him now and he didn't know how to stop it, Abyss, he didn't even know if he wanted to stop it.
Kitiara leaned down over him, placing her hands on either side of his face, and brushed his tears away with her lips tenderly, almost reverently. A shiver of delight and pure ecstasy coursed through him and he tangled his hands in her soft curls, brushing the sides of his face against hers gently in a tender display of affection. He knew that the human equivalent of that gesture would be a kiss, but he didn't know how to do it and he didn't want to disappoint her. Kitiara came to his rescue again, placing her lips softly over his, with the barest pressure, but it was enough to light a fire inside him.
Soon, too soon, their lips parted and Khellendros opened his eyes, staring up into Kitiara's mellow brown ones. "I had thought about wearing the shape of a dragon for you, my Blue, and I will do it later, - she whispered heatedly, her eyes never leaving his as she helped him out of his garments and he of hers, grateful for the lack of armour – but we need to be human for what I want to do to you now." she explained. Khellendros looked a question to her, uncomprehending.
"What is the thing you like to do most with me?" she asked. Khellendros was even more confused, but tried to answer truthfully and coherently, even if her hands roamed and stroked him everywhere. "I love to fly with you…" he managed.
"You like it when I ride you, don't you?" she asked, brushing her lips against his again. He gasped and nodded, breathless, powerless against the sensual assault she was unleashing on him. Everywhere their skin touched, he felt on fire and there was plenty of touching: they were both naked and she was straddling him, hovering tantalisingly close to the part of him that ached most for her.
"That's exactly what I am going to do, my lovely Blue. – she breathed passionately against his lips – I am going to ride you to glory…"
There were other times, later, when she taught him how to please her, guiding his clumsy human form into the motions that made her writhe and moan so beautifully in pleasure, or simply letting him explore her body to his heart's content, but that first time it had been all about him and it had forever redefined his concept of pleasure. She had ridden him hard indeed, and it had been so glorious that words could not describe it. He had moaned and screamed and pleaded, but he had not felt ashamed by it. When he was inside her, he felt complete, like a piece of a jigsaw slotting finally in place. He was hers and she his and nothing they did together could ever be wrong.
Afterwards, they had lain together on the fuzzy ground, curled so tightly together that he barely knew where he ended and she began, sweat cooling on their bodies. Kitiara kissed him again sweetly. "My Blue… - she whispered sleepily – I wish we had done that sooner, when we were still alive. We could have had many blissful years together…"
Khellendros caressed her lovely face, brushing stray curls from her eyes. "We have eternity now, my love." he said smiling.
"Barely enough to make up for the years we have spent apart." Kitiara replied, closing her eyes and snuggling against his chest.
"We will make do, I promise." he retorted. Kitiara did not reply, she was already asleep against him as she used to do when they were still alive and she felt very tired or in need of comfort. Khellendros used to curl around her to keep her warm and pretend that she was only his as he had been hers, perhaps since the first moment he had clapped his eyes on her. Only, now there was no need to pretend anymore. It was true, finally and forever.
Dying was a small price for such bliss, he thought, falling asleep in the arms of his love.