"I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry."
~John Donne

Chapter 7. Very Close Now.

The forest was filled with a rather embarrassed silence. Inevitably, both Xellos and Filia had run out of things to complain about each other. Neither one of them seemed to be able to stand the idea that they might have said all they could possibly say to the other and were bending most of their will-power on creative character assassination. After all, if they couldn't fight anymore, then what was left but to shake hands and try to get along? Now that was a frightening notion.

But the quality of the insults was really waning. Things were just getting petty at this point. The last argument had centered around hairstyles. Xellos was not willing to let that be the ending mark for the dialogue since, if he was honest with himself, he'd definitely lost that exchange.

"How far away are we from Seyruun?" Filia asked when she could think of nothing else to say.

"Not far," Xellos said, peaking around the corner of the conversation for some kind of opportunity to annoy her. "Only a couple days if we keep moving."

"Well, that's a relief," Filia said. She felt like this whole trip was going to go on forever… like it had gone on forever.

"I couldn't agree more," Xellos said, and then smiled as he hit on his opportunity, "Darling."

The effect was a good as Xellos could've hoped. Filia stopped dead and shuddered visibly. Her eye might have been twitching as well.

"Don't do that," she said, with a dangerous glare. "It's not funny."

"I'm not trying to be funny," Xellos said, though he personally found it hilarious. "I just thought endearing little pet names came with the territory when you got married."

She grimaced. She always seemed to have a few blissful moments when she almost forgot about the… matrimony thing, and then it would come back to hit her like a grand piano with a ton of bricks inside of it. She didn't need him reminding her.

"I'll stick with 'raw garbage' if it's all the same to you," she said.

"Oh yes," Xellos said with a smile that was more like a wince. "I always did find that charming."

Filia watched as his expression suddenly changed. Something had caught his attention. She had just opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong when he leaped forward, clamped a gloved hand over her mouth, and sent them both toppling into a nearby bush.

"Mwut dwo yoff thlink yaw dwoing?!" Filia demanded in a way that would have been perfectly clear and forceful if it weren't for the fact that Xellos had his hand over her mouth.

"Lesser demons," Xellos whispered, leaning over her, eyeing the clearing beside the path they'd been on through the bush where a few low-class horrors were milling about.

"Did they see us?" Filia whispered, as Xellos took his hand away (tentatively, as though ready to shut her up again if she intended on screaming like an idiot).

"No," Xellos said with certainty. "And we have to make sure that they don't."

Something about the urgency in Xellos's tone injured Filia's pride a little. She knew she wasn't anywhere near his match when it came to well… slaying things. But she'd been doing her best with the monsters they'd come up against and none of them had beat her yet.

"I can handle a few lesser demons," she said defensively.

"They're not here to attack," Xellos said, eyes still focused beyond Filia's line of sight to where the lesser demons were. "They're scouting."

Filia wished she could see what was going on, but she was kind of… uh… pinned. "But they're looking for us, right?"

"Yes. It's very likely that they're doing the dirty work of another monster," he said, going through the possibilities in his mind. "If they see us they'll run off and tell their master. If we kill them then their master will come to investigate where they disappeared. A monster using scouts is probably of a much higher class than the fodder you've been barely keeping at bay, so we can't let them find us."

Filia noted the shot at her combat skills and was not very successful at keeping the irritation out of her voice when she said, "So what do you suggest we do then?"

"We wait," Xellos said, finally breaking his gaze upwards and looking down at her. "Quietly. Until they leave."

"Fine," Filia said, and waited.

The brain is a lovely tool, fitted upon life forms in order to regulate functions, solve problems, and introspect. Thought is, in general, productive, and helps the thinker in whatever situation they find themselves in.

However, that's not always the case. There are other thoughts, the dark twins to those constructive, self-improvement thoughts. There are… the kamikaze thoughts.

Everyone gets them every so often. They tend to be loud, quick, and completely unstoppable. For example, maybe you're walking downstairs at night to get a drink of water. Your brain takes moments like this to scream: "I HOPE THERE'S NOTHING SCARY DOWN THERE, LIKE A ROBBER, OR A RAPIST, OR A DEMON FROM THE HEART OF THE BLACK VOID!" If your mind is particularly self-destructive, you'll get the follow-up: "DID YOU HEAR THAT?!"

Basically, these thoughts are the equivalent of a foot stuck out in front of you to trip you up. What makes it worse is that it's your own brain that's out to get you. You might think everything's fine, and then all of the sudden a kamikaze thought comes along and causes you discomfort or distress when discomfort and distress are not necessary.

At that moment the thought, "MY GOODNESS, WE'RE AWFULLY CLOSE TOGETHER AREN'T WE?" blazed through Filia's consciousness, set a collision course for her frontal lobe, and exploded on impact, sending thought shrapnel all across Filia's brain.

Stop yourself, she thought back firmly. But it was too late. The thing about kamikaze thoughts is: once you've thought it, you can't unthink it.

The thought had a bit of a point though. Taken out of context this scene might look a little… suggestive. He was leaning low over her, quite close to avoid being seen over the top of the bush, with one arm braced on the ground on both sides of her.

There was nothing to look at but his face. Well… that wasn't precisely true. She could've turned her head to the side and examined the leaves of the particular bush they were hiding in. But doing that would've said quite clearly that she was uncomfortable looking him in the eye, and such a sign of weakness was unacceptable.

The important thing, she thought as she felt her heart-rate quicken and noted with disapproval a buzz from the more industriously rebellious areas of her psyche, is not to blush. Because he's less than a foot away from my face and if I blush, he'll know. And then I'll have to either kill myself or him. Probably both.

While Filia was trying to threaten the blood-vessels in her face into submission, Xellos was trying hard not to think that, if a poet were to describe Filia's hair he might have used phrases like, "golden tresses" or "glimmering strands, wisping away in the gentle zephyr". The word "gossamer" would probably have been thrown in too, for no other reason than the fact that it sounded pretty. He already hated this highly imaginary poet.

It's not like he hadn't seen her hair before. It was just that it was… kind of flowing there as she lay on the ground. The sun filtered in through the domed roof of the shrub, around the leaves of the hedge making her blonde hair look faintly sparkly. No wonder he'd lost the hairstyle argument.

Between her long, flowing hair and her usual stupid hat, Filia's ears were rarely in view. They were though, just at the moment. Xellos noted that, like her fellow golden dragons, Filia had pointed ears like an elf. It seemed kind of stupid no matter how you looked at it. Golden dragons often take advantage of their ability to appear in human form. As far as Xellos was concerned, the point of looking like a human was to put humans at ease and to hide your true identity from them. But no, golden dragons had decided that even though they could change their appearance they'd keep the ears. Just to leave a gigantic signpost for the humans. But that's dragons for you.

She looked very uncomfortable. The fact that she was trying to hide this just made it more obvious. He was pretty sure that the prescribed reaction to being forced down into the hedges by someone who is technically your husband was not to glare determinedly at them. If she'd had room at all she'd have been crossing her arms.

Not that he necessarily wanted her to follow the traditional blushing and looking away archetype. That would've been decidedly awkward. But he wasn't in the mood for a staring contest either.

He was sure that if she kept up that expression for much longer her face would stick that way. He would've bet money that her teeth were clenched behind her lips. She was breathing heavier than usual, her chest rising and falling with each—

"Ahem," Filia cleared her throat irritably.

His eyes flicked back to her face from where they had mutinously wandered. "What?" he asked innocently.

Thanks to a few contradictory thoughts Filia was both scowling and blushing. "Have they gone yet?" she asked, trying to keep her tone even through gritted teeth.

Xellos lifted his head to look over the top of the foliage. "Yes," he said.

"In that case," she said crossly, "would you consider getting off of me?"

He adopted a thoughtful expression. "I'm considering it."

"Get off," she practically snarled, shoving him aside and getting to her feet.

Xellos got to his feet as well, his body-language, for just one moment, saying, "your loss" before getting back to more important matters.

"Given the circumstances," he said, looking around to be sure that the scouts were indeed gone, "I think it would be best if we went to Bennin now."

Filia frowned thoughtfully, trying to find some directional context for this. "I thought we were going to Seyruun by way of the Reeze pass. That's a little out of the way."

"Exactly," Xellos said. "If we keep going the direct route it'll be obvious as to where we're heading. The roads to the east meander a little bit more so anyone following us will be less assured as to our final destination. We're getting very close to Seyruun City now and the last thing we want is for our enemies to be waiting for us when we arrive. Well," he paused, because monsters tend to be very good at calculating worst case scenarios, "one of the last things."

"But we've come such a long way already," Filia complained, not wanting to delay their arrival at Seyruun anymore than strictly necessary.

"True." Xellos narrowed his eyes at her. "And we don't want everything to be ruined just because you're impatient."

"I'm not impatient. I'm just tired of waiting!" Filia said, practically giving the dictionary definition of 'impatient'.

"Anyway," Filia said, trying to hit on a better line of opposition, "If we're going to take the back roads we could at least go farther than Bennin. That's only a few hours away and it's barely midday."

"And that's exactly why they won't expect us to be there," Xellos explained. "It wouldn't even register as a place worth checking, considering their search patterns. If we stop early we have a good chance of losing our pursuers altogether in the town."

"Well, why stop there?" Filia snapped in a burst of sarcasm. "Let's just double all the way back to Dils," she said, waving her arms about theatrically. "That'd really confuse them!"

"That would be needlessly cautious," Xellos said, calmly ignoring her sarcasm.

Filia groaned. "Fine, have it your way. Let's just keep moving."


He'd ditched her. They'd arrived in Bennin, got two adjoining rooms at the local inn, and then he'd made some excuse about having, "to check on something". It seemed pretty fishy to Filia, but since she had no idea what he could possibly have to check on, her suspicions floundered fruitlessly.

Considering that they'd wasted half a day's travel just because he was worried about them being followed, it seemed inconsistent that he'd want them to split up. What if the dragons or the monsters found one of them when the other wasn't around?

He'd shrugged this off as soon as she'd asked him, saying that the chances of them being attacked here were very slim. They'd never been attacked in a town yet and this wasn't even a likely town to check. He'd also said that clinging to a monster like a frightened child was unbecoming of a golden dragon.

Filia, who'd been clinging to nothing, hmphed and asked, "What do you need to check on anyway?"

Xellos put his finger to his lips in a highly characteristic gesture that would've normally made Filia want to throttle him. She figured she must be gaining some Xellos-annoyance-related immunity from being forced to be around him constantly. "That is a secret," he said, and disappeared into the crowd. She rolled her eyes for all she was worth.

There had been so little for her to do. She'd had a late lunch or an early dinner depending on your perspective. There were a few nice shops in town but she was feeling a little too high-strung for window shopping.

So she'd killed time around the inn as best she could, reading through the town newsletter, chatting with the old woman who ran the inn, and getting beaten at checkers by a deceptively intelligent eight-year-old. She'd gone up to her room early in a state of restless boredom, figuring that she could at least get a good night's sleep so they could make an early start of it tomorrow.

Unfortunately, this plan was crashing around her ears. She'd been staring at the ceiling for hours and couldn't seem to drift off. Even Xellos must've settled in by then as she'd heard him in the adjoining room some time ago, back from his mysterious errand, and he didn't even need to sleep.

Her mood had been in a downward slope all day and it seemed to be curving toward a very unpleasant place indeed. She'd started off, well, maybe not in a happy mood, but better than she felt at the moment. She'd been mad at Xellos and she'd been anxious about them being attacked again. These weren't exactly good feelings but they were… oh, heightened ones at least.

Her anxiety had been draining away all day. As it turned out, Xellos was right. It wasn't likely they'd be attacked here. And without Xellos around to be… Xellos, her anger was ebbing away.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her, those feelings of fear for the next attack and any and all distractions caused by Xellos being plain annoying had been buffers against other thoughts.

Right now she was thinking of home.

She turned over in bed and peered out the half-closed window and into the night sky. It was a cloudy night so you couldn't see many stars, but the moon was high in the sky. One half dark, one half light. Balanced on the edge. She shivered under her woolen blanket.

This is insane, she thought to herself. How did I get myself into this mess?

She missed Val. She missed Jillas. She missed Gravos. She missed the shop. She'd missed them all before, but now homesickness really had time to cut into her heart.

Dwelling on it didn't do any good, she knew, but she couldn't help but wonder what they thought must have happened to her. She'd been gone far longer than she said she would. She knew she must be worrying them.

She knew running back to them would've just put them in danger. It's safer for them that they don't know what's going on. But…, she bit her lip, how could I have abandoned my son for so long?

She gripped her pillow and cried softly into it. At this point she wasn't sure which she dreaded more: that Xellos might hear her or that he might not.


Xellos did not hear her crying because he was not in the adjoining room. He'd visited it briefly to gather a pen and paper, but then headed back to the main room of the inn where the light was best.

He took a folded piece of paper out of his cloak and smoothed it over the table's surface. It was the marriage certificate he'd received as a result of the unfortunate misunderstanding back at the Gruddi Temple. Then he took out the manuscript he'd acquired that afternoon. It had been hard to find since Bennin was not exactly a cosmopolitan place, but he'd found it in the fourth bookstore. It was a Gruddian dictionary.

It was a bit like shutting the barn door after the horses had got out. It was extremely unlikely that he'd ever be in a position like the one at the beginning of their misadventure again, but monsters tend to be very conscientious about not making the same mistakes twice. It's a good survival strategy.

So now he was busily translating the marriage contract. He didn't hold out much hope that there would be a helpful loop-hole on it, but anything is possible. Anyway, he was somewhat curious about what the piece of gibberish actually said.

The beginning was a legal bit and, due to the Gruddi custom of marrying anyone or anything to anyone or anything, lacked something in the way of romance. It roughly translated to:

"We the undersigned do pledge before gods/demons/duly appointed legal authority/misc our love for one another and join our households together regardless of unforeseen circumstances that may arrive, (to whit: sickness/health, richness/poorness, youth/decrepitude, beauty/ugliness, virility/impotence, interest/boredom, happiness/sadness, possessed by an evil spirit/evil spirit free, etc., etc.) until death do you part (death statute does not apply in the case of zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other members of the undead community as well as inanimate objects)."

Xellos noted the use of plural pronouns to negate the he/she/it problem so common on the forms of the more open-minded variety of churches. He groaned. He and Filia had unwittingly walked into the only temple around that probably wouldn't have cared even if they'd known they were monster and dragon.

There were verses below the legal jargon, Xellos flipped through the dictionary and translated it. It went:

"Who deigns to decide true love's worth?
Men and Kings and Gods on high weigh,
In with stipulations to judge its birth.
But is that not, Love, for you and I to say?

No matter what Opposition we face,
Or what those who talk against us do,
If they wish, they may withhold their Grace,
But I will still pledge myself unto you.

Your beautiful Soul has me entranced,
Your honest kisses, my Heart refresh.
By Holy Union our bond enhanced,
That those apart may become One Flesh."

Xellos gave a nasty look to his own signature, imprinted accusingly at the bottom of the document. A love poem. All the mawkish drivel they'd extracted from the exceedingly legal preamble had been dumped into one extra disgusting love poem.

The bit about opposition was telling too. It was probably the Gruddian way of saying, "Hey, we may approve of marriages to teacups, but that's just because we serve the highest power of all, which is love". We're not sorry because we have our lovely ideals.

Even though he knew that the thing was at least 99% bullshit, he also couldn't help but recognize how dangerous something like this was. It was like a kind of magic. It said that the world was a certain way and bent reality around itself. The young couple sees these words and says yes, that's true. They believe it so it becomes real. Maybe the spell will only last a few years, a few months, or a few weeks in bad cases before the magic fades, but it was a cunning manipulation nevertheless. Perfectly sane people, led down a path because of a few corny rhyming words.

The worst jolt was that it was his contract. Those words were supposed to apply to him and Filia of all people. He read over the translation again.

And then again.

He'd better not show this to Filia, he decided as he folded up the paper and put it back in his cloak. After all, she was so… sentimental. This kind of thing tends to effect women like her.

Not him. He was too strong to be tricked by this kind of starry-eyed suggestion.

He took the poem out again and read it a fourth time.

Goddamnit.