Chapte: Three||Words: 4,610


Juudai curled up under his rain-cloak, listening to the patter of rain on the shelter overhead. The cloak kept him warm, while the shelter kept him dry, and sausages stuffed his stomach. There were still a few left on the tray but he left them where they were, along with the vegetables. He figured the flying magic talking rabbits would want carrots and lettuce and radishes more than they would want sausages, and this would probably lure them in.

If they really were flying talking magic bunnies. Otherwise, he would have to start figuring out how something that couldn't fly made it up to him.

He stifled a yawn and peered out of the shelter to where he could just sort of see the dark shape of the guards walking this way and that. He'd heard one of them – the same one that he'd heard complaining about bunnies before – flat out insisting that he'd gone out of his way to make certain that whatever or whoever was involved in stealing from the garden wouldn't do it again. Juudai didn't worry about that a lot. The magic bunnies would probably rather come see him and his plate than a boring guard, wouldn't they?

So he made himself as comfortable as he could and wondered when the rain would stop. Even better, he wondered when the rabbits would come. Maybe closer to morning; that was – probably – when they'd come the first time.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He wasn't actually sleeping and despite his little yawn, he wasn't all that tired, not since he'd slept most of the day. He'd really been a little surprised when the clouds started to roll up and rain sprinkled downward after sunset. Maybe the weather mages knew a little bit more than he'd thought they had before.

Without warning, the sky split apart, a bolt of lightning streaking from one side of the heavens to the other. Taken by surprise, Juudai jumped, grabbing at the edges of his shelter, and staring around, heart beating faster for a few moments. Slowly he calmed down, as nothing else seemed to happen.

Did I see something? He wasn't really sure. The moment when all of the sky had been lit by lightning had been so brief that even if he'd seen something moving, he didn't know what it was. It could have been a tree branch waving in the wind or even a bird startled up out of sleep by the weather.

More rain pattered down, far more intensely now, and Juudai tightened the grip of his cloak around himself.

I should have waited for another night. When it's not raining. He wrinkled his nose at the weather and tried to stay as dry as he could. As more rain poured down, he came to a quick decision: as soon as the rain eased up, he was going to go back inside. He could come back when the weather was better and find the rabbits.

After all, would any sensible magical rabbit come out here in this weather? They'd get all muddy! Juudai hated being muddy and he'd never figured out why anyone would feel any different about it.

Where did magical talking flying rabbits live when they weren't off stealing from royal gardens? For that matter, where did regular rabbits live? He'd read what he could find but most of what he'd dug up involved stories about rabbits instead of stuff about rabbits. He hadn't even really found anything about what rabbits ate. He'd asked for the vegetables because everyone knew that rabbits ate vegetables.

They didn't eat sausage. At least he hoped not.

Juudai peered out again, but there wasn't much out there to see except the tall dark shapes of trees blowing in the wind, the echoes of the wind against the shelter, and a few shapes moving that he guessed were the guards. He couldn't see them well enough to be sure, but they were too big to be rabbits.

Usually the garden was lit up by magical lighting even at night – at night the lights grew dimmer but you could still see the way – but right now Juudai couldn't see anything at all. He rubbed his eyes as he stared out, straining to get just the littlest glimpse of anything and not succeeding all that well.

Slowly his eyes started to close. He hadn't been all that sleepy but they closed regardless. At the same time, he could hear something at the very edges of his awareness, something like birdsong. He tried to hear it a little more, even as his energy faded and he started to sleep.

At least Juudai thought he was asleep. He didn't seem to be able to move his arms or legs or even open his eyes. He could still hear the rain pattering down outside and the occasional roll of thunder or the way that the lightning arced overhead.

And he could hear tiny movements that almost seemed like footsteps. Only they sounded like people footsteps instead of furry footsteps. So they couldn't be the magic rabbits, could they?

He wanted to stir up and find out what he was hearing. He could sort of see his tray, if he strained his eyelids to crack the tiniest bit, and he thought there weren't as many vegetables as there had been before.

And wasn't a sausage missing now too? He'd left three on there and he could only see two.

Juudai strained to open his eyes all the way and twitch his fingers, to get out of the sweet web of song that wrapped all around him. He couldn't hear it very well, but it was there, humming against his bones, keeping him from doing anything.

He didn't like that, the more he thought about it. At least as much as he could think about anything. Every word in his head seemed stuck to all the other words, thick and difficult to work through and not all that clear.

A shadow of some kind fell over him. He couldn't get a look at it, but whatever it was, it was darkness, and Juudai reacted to darkness the way that flowers responded to light. He stirred a little harder, his eyes dragging open, and his mind cleared just enough to realize someone was standing over him. He couldn't see who it was; they had something over their face. But the moment his eyes opened, whoever it was moved backwards, words hissing out that he couldn't understand.

Juudai grabbed for the gem that kept everything in the shelter warm, dry, and lit up. He'd wondered if this wasn't a bad idea earlier, because he wasn't sure if the magic rabbits would come because of it. Now he wrapped his hand around it, extinguishing it with his grip.

Juudai wasn't very good at controlling his powers when he tried to. But when he didn't try, when he let himself act without thought, what he did tended to turn out at least mostly right.

With the light gone, he could see what stood before him. A figure about as tall as his mother, but with little visible thanks to the cloak that it wore. He could see hands and a bit of their face, skin so pale that the owner might never have seen the sun. Juudai jerked up to his feet, wishing on an internal level that he could get hold of a weapon.

But all he could do now was reach out to the invader, trying to grab onto them. His hands closed on the cloak wrapped around the stranger and he tugged with all of his might, banging on a slender body. He tried with every ounce of his young strength to get hold of the cloak and see who it was, to figure out what was going on.

He tried, but regardless of the power that infused his body, he still had the body of a child, and whoever this was stood much taller and stronger than he did. He could feel hands grasping onto his shoulders and pushing him away. His feet scraped against the shelter floor uselessly. Juudai barely had time to understand what was going on before he found himself pitched over the side of the shelter, falling into the darkness and the rain.

The ground came up so much harder and faster than he'd ever thought it would. It wasn't at all the first time that he'd ever fallen and hurt himself, but never quite like this before. For a few terrifying moments he wondered if this would be it for him, if he'd never see his mother and father again.

But then something small and soft threw itself between Juudai and the ground and he squawked, wriggling in confusion, a sharp pain radiating up one of his arms, and then the music stole itself around him all over again, and this time he didn't have any darkness to set between him and the song.


To Be Continued

Notes: So, halfway to the end already! Updating daily has been going well so far!