Based on characters from Fablehaven© by Brandon Mull. The original characters and plot details are my property. No copyright infringement intended.
She turned and looked at him. She had to laugh. He was a disaster. He was holding the loose jeans up with both hands. The large t-shirt half tucked into the jeans, the gauze belt threaded through the loops but dangled loosely on the side. He looked at her slightly embarrassed.
"I don't know how to tie a knot, never had thumbs," he laughed nervously.
She laughed and pulled the gauze tight on the side where he had left it hanging. She tied it snuggly around his waist so the jeans wouldn't slip off his narrow hips. Once she tied the belt tight, she pulled the t-shirt out over the jeans.
He watched her as she tied the knot but still didn't quite know how to do it, he would have to get a lesson later he thought. When she pulled the t-shirt out of the jeans, he felt the smooth cloth slide over his skin and it gave him tingles and bumps formed on his arms. He didn't understand why but it felt pleasant and made him smile.
"Thanks," he smiled at her as she looked back up at him.
Now that he was happy, the mood in the room was definitely much lighter. When she looked up at him, she realized he was very tall like Bracken. She turned and grabbed the bandage off the countertop.
"How did you get here?" Kendra asked as she waved the bandage at him. Warren's cabin was on the other side of the sanctuary miles away from the little barn.
"Where is here?" Raxtus asked looking around the one small room knowing he wouldn't find anything familiar about it. He pulled up the t-shirt to expose his wound and watched again as Kendra quickly laid the bandage in place.
"You don't know where you are?" Kendra asked surprised, pressing the tape against his skin.
"No! If I knew I wouldn't ask," he said curtly. He jerked the t-shirt down over his jeans feeling some of his earlier frustration. His wound twitched and he felt ridiculous for the unfair outburst.
Then she realized that although Raxtus was friends with Warren he had never been inside Warren's cabin. Raxtus had never been inside any of the houses before as a dragon he was too big to get through the door.
"Sorry, I didn't think. You're in Warren's cabin," she said quietly.
"Really? Huh! I wonder why I came here," he said puzzled. "So what were you doing here?"
"I was going to straighten it up, dust, sweep, that sort of thing. Warren is coming back for a visit," she shrugged.
"Warren has been gone for a while. I haven't seen him since last summer. How is he?" he asked curiously.
"He's doing well. It will be good to see him," she replied.
"Yes it will, won't he be surprised when he sees me!" He laughed for a second and then got serious again. "Okay! I need to figure out what I was doing here. Let me help you straighten the place up. Maybe it will jog my memory," he said looking around uncertain what 'dust' or 'sweep' meant.
"Seen Bracken lately?" he asked cheerfully, and then he looked confused. "Wait a minute…" he glared at her, "You don't glow anymore!"
"Yes, I do," she said indignantly, though she couldn't 'see' it she knew she still glowed with the light of fairy magic. "Oh, but you can't see it anymore," she said sadly. "Neither humans nor regular dragons see the fairylight."
"Oh," he said sullenly. "I won't hear fairies any more or the Fairy Queen? That means I won't be able to travel using her shrines. I kind of knew it might happen but I didn't think about it too hard. What good will I do? I won't be able to travel for the Fairy Queen anymore," he moaned, his face returning to his earlier gloomy expression.
"You should still be able to hear the fairies and the Fairy Queen. She wouldn't take that from you. You won't be able to use the shrines, that part is true. Well... as compensation maybe you will get new breath weapons. You know awesome fire breathing or something," she said trying to be optimistic.
"Do you think so?" he said brightly then he became glum again. "I don't know if I will get any new powers and I have lost the powers I had. I'm still pretty clueless about dragon magic. Do you know why I lost the fairy magic?"
"Plus you can walk around like a normal person. No one will know who or what you are. I was told that a dragon in human form was a perfect disguise," she said avoiding the fairy magic question.
Kendra said the one thing that immediately got Raxtus' attention – 'normal'.
Raxtus started thinking about walking around like a 'normal' person, which definitely sounded appealing. Now he was a normal human not the runt dragon or the focus of ridicule. No one knew who he was except Kendra. That was good, that was very good.
Being a runt dragon breathing fire didn't sound particularly tempting. They would probably make fun of him anyway or possibly challenge him and kill him in a fight. He might feel different if he was in his dragon form but the thought of staying human sounded more attractive right now. How long would it take to learn to be a normal human, not a just dragon pretending to be human?
"Who was your guide? You just disappeared and we didn't know where you had gone," Kendra asked after a few moments when he didn't reply.
"My guide?" Raxtus asked confused.
"Uh-huh. Your dad told Bracken you would have a guide to teach you about your dragon magic after you had rested," she explained.
"How long did I rest before I disappeared? It doesn't look like you are too much older." He looked closely at her.
"Only a few weeks. Why? Did you expect to be resting longer?" Kendra asked surprised at his statement.
"Actually, I didn't know I was going to sleep. No one told me to expect anything," he said accusingly. "I realize that I could have easily slept for twenty years. It's nothing to a dragon. I'm glad that I woke up sooner. I would have missed you guys a lot," he said contemplating the situation. His stomach grumbled and he rubbed at it unconsciously.
"Watching you sleeping for twenty years would have been excruciating, three weeks was bad enough. I have been so worried about you. You left the safety of the warded building and have been missing a little over a month," she confessed. "That's why I was so glad to see you."
"Missing for a month?" he said puzzled. He didn't realize he had roamed around that long. "But I had no guide. I have no magic." He shook his head and frowned. "I woke up alone and trotted my sleepy dragon butt out of there and took a nap in the swamp. I wiggled deep into the soft muck and just went back to sleep. After a while a swamp troll took exception to me being there and started to make himself a nuisance so I left. I was sleepy but really didn't want to eat a nasty swamp troll. Have you ever...? No, never mind." He looked up at Kendra's grimace and stopped his sentence. His stomach grumbled again.
Kendra gagged at the thought of smelling one much less eating a stinking swamp troll. She guessed from his reaction even a dragon would have been sick.
"Have you eaten anything lately?" she asked listening to his stomach growl for a third time.
"No, I haven't. I passed on the swamp troll but didn't look for anything else. I wasn't thinking about food while I was in here," he frowned and rubbed his stomach. "I was never my fairy avatar long enough to need to eat like the fairies do. This is human hunger? It's uncomfortable, different."
"Yes, it still comes with its own alarm system," she laughed remembering hearing his dragon stomach grumble a few times before. "Well, I brought something for me to eat. I think you need it more than I do right now. I know you haven't eaten in over a month. That's too long even for a dragon," Kendra told him. She pulled the day pack off her shoulder, set it on the table and unzipped it and started rummaging inside it.
"I am feeling a little shaky now that I think of it. What have you got in there?" He asked. Curious, he leaned over the table to see what she was doing. His stomach continued to grumble.
"Yeah, you need to raise your blood sugar. How about a ham sandwich…," she offered. She unwrapped and held out the sandwich, "and some carrots."
"Anything," he said and took the offered sandwich. He bit into it with anticipation. "Mmm." He rolled his eyes with satisfaction at the flavor of the sandwich.
She tore open the package of carrots and tossed it on the table in front of him. He sat in a chair and grabbed a carrot from the bag and tossed it into his mouth between bites of the sandwich. He smacked his lips as he chewed with his mouth open.
"Mouth closed, please," she said habitually, when she heard the sound of smacking lips.
"Mouth closed?" he asked. "What does that mean?"
"Oh! Sorry! I'm use to correcting Seth," she said blushing with embarrassment.
"What's that about?" he asked with his mouth full and he was still chewing noisily.
"It's kind of a good manners thing, not making noise when you eat. You don't eat with your mouth open or smack you lips," she replied, shrugged her shoulders and grimaced at her slip-up.
"I guess I will need to know things like that won't I?" he said thoughtfully and swallowed his mouthful of food, "if I am going to be a human with good manners."
"Yes, I suppose so," she admitted.
"Tell me if I do something wrong. Please… I don't want to be a terrible human now that I have a perfectly good human body to run around in," he asked with his mouth empty.
He returned to eating his sandwich making sure he chewed with his mouth closed.
"I've got some juice too," she said and set a large bottle of mixed fruit juice on the table. She walked the few steps to the kitchen cabinet and took out two glasses. She poured out a glass for him and pushed it toward him then poured one for herself.
He continued to chew the food in his mouth absently as he attentively watched her pour the reddish liquid into the glasses. He pulled the glass of juice toward himself and took a sip and nodded approvingly.
"Being an omnivore isn't too bad," he said as he finished the sandwich. He started on the crunchy carrot sticks and his glass of juice. The feel, taste and texture of food and the sweet tartness of the juice in his mouth were new experiences. Everything was new and wonderful.
Kendra remembered dragons were totally carnivorous. They usually ate their prey in one or two bites and didn't chew a whole lot. They crunched the bigger bones in half but that was about all.
"Chew your food thoroughly. It is part of our digestion process. Um… quick tip in the manners department don't talk with food in your mouth, swallow first and don't slurp your drink," she said smiling. "That should do it for eating with your hands. There is a whole bunch of rules for eating with utensils." She held up a fork that was sitting on the nearby counter and waved it at him, grinning.
"Umm…" he groaned and rolled his eyes but continued to eat, chewing a bit longer this time.
Kendra laughed at his comment. She sat down also and watched him devour the entire bag of carrots as she sipped on her juice. She looked into her pack and pulled out a small apple and a cup of pudding and set them in front of him.
"Yum, sweet," he said as he finished his first bite of apple.
"Don't eat the seeds in the core, they are bitter," she told him before he took another bite.
Raxtus ate the small apple in four large but well chewed bites. Then he poured the rest of the bottle of juice into his glass and drank it all. The strange package of food sat untouched. He was uncertain how to open it and unsure how to eat what it contained if he got it opened.
"I think that will hold me for a while. Thanks Kendra. I didn't realize that I needed to eat so badly," he sighed with relief and smiled at her. He felt his stomach, now filled with food, rumble again making different noises.
He felt strangely comfortable sitting in a chair at a table, something he had never done before. He ran his hands over the smooth wood of the table noticing the feel with his human fingertips. So many new sensations bombarding his body, both internally and externally, it was almost overwhelming.
"So what did you do after not eating the swamp troll?" Kendra asked, getting back to his story of how he got to the cabin.
"I just wandered around for a while. I had no idea that it had been a month. Everything was kind of fuzzy and I was so sleepy, I probably slept most of the time away. I remembered that I was supposed to have a new avatar so I think I tried it. I had no idea what I would look like," he grimaced and shivered. "I'm an idiot.
"It is very difficult to remember especially as sleepy and uncertain as I was. I don't even know what even drove me to try. I wanted to be so precise, think about it and get it just right. So I what did I do? I invoked in my sleep, idiot!" he shrugged and shook his head. "I hope I didn't mess up too badly. How did I do?" he asked shyly and stood up for her to inspect his new avatar, though she already had been staring at him for the last hour.
"Sit down, Raxtus. You look great. You did a good job. I knew it was you because you look a lot like your fairy avatar but in a more mature human form. I know you will hate this… but you're really very… cute," Kendra said blushing because she had seen him naked, well almost all of him. His fortunately positioned muddy ankle had kept her from seeing all of him as she looked over the table at him.
If I didn't have Bracken I'd consider you as boyfriend material, she thought. She knew he was sweet. Now he was super cute… dragon or not.
"Really?" he blushed. His cheeks flushed light pink and Kendra thought that made him even cuter.
"Yes, really," Kendra said appraising him with a thorough look-over from head to foot. He blushed again at her examination and hurried to sit back down.
"I'm not sure what it is. You have beautiful eyes but I think it's the messy white blonde hair and your slim build," Kendra nodded her head suppressing a giggle.
"Huh, I didn't know." He smoothed his shirt over his baggy jeans, smiling. "I guess I did okay then. Did I guess my age correctly? How old do I look?" He was pleased with Kendra's assessment of his new avatar. It sure beat the wimpy fairy boy or runt of a dragon by miles. He could run around like this and not feel self conscious but he didn't want to draw too much attention either.
"Yeah, well, you did very okay. You look about Seth's age, sixteen or seventeen," she answered honestly. "Raxtus, I have a question. Why did you invoke your avatar here? It's a good place, safe for humans and all. But how did you know about it?" she asked curious.
"I don't remember. I honestly don't really remember invoking my avatar everything was so fuzzy. I was still sleepy. I don't know, I guess I did it because here I am." He couldn't really remember it was like a fading dream. The further he got from the actual experience the less he remembered.
"What was I doing after the spell?" he asked watching her attentively.
Kendra thought he seemed bewildered and hesitant as if he really couldn't remember invoking his avatar; he was even hazier than when she first arrived.
"Your little fairy avatar looked so awful before Bracken flashed you back to a dragon." Kendra's eyes filled with tears as she thought of the withered wings and his gray pallor.
"How did he do that?" he asked intensely interested.
"He laid one of his horns across your body and you turned back into yourself. I'm not sure exactly how he did it because I was kind of in shock," she admitted wiping the tears away.
"Oh!" he drew a quick startled breath. "I remember it was so cold. The opposite of what your magic felt like. I was falling or shrinking… it was so awful. I wanted you to stop but Bracken said you couldn't," he shook his head at the fading memory. "I felt myself crumbling before I passed out. I think that's when I lost the fairy magic. I don't know what would have happened to me if Bracken hadn't turned me back," he said, his eyes were distant and unfocused.
"I remember the table broke under your weight and scented smoke covered you and then you were dreaming," she continued her own memory of after the spell was unclear. "Your eyes were moving around under your lids a lot. That was the only thing moving that's why I noticed. I kept watching, waiting for you to wake up but you kept sleeping and dreaming," she said with more confidence, since she had watched him dream for three weeks. "We waited but we didn't keep a twenty-four hour watch on you, sorry.
"What were you dreaming about?" she asked softly.
"I don't know," he whispered, wondering what she had seen after he passed out and what the scented smoke was.
"I don't remember… I don't remember a lot," he suddenly said loud and frustrated, his hands flying again. "I need to find out why I was drawn here though. I do know that much – that I was drawn here. What do you know about this place?"
"It's been here a long time. Dale moved Warren in here when he was catatonic but it was empty for lots of years. I vaguely remember something about it but not enough to say for sure. We need to ask Grandma Sorenson if there is a record of who built it and all those who lived here," Kendra suggested.
"Okay, let's get to work so we can go ask." He volunteered, looking around for something to do.
"He won't be here for a couple of days. I have time to finish straightening up later. Let's go ask now," she said enthusiastically.
"How did you get here?" Raxtus asked eager find some information it gave him a focus.
"I walked," Kendra said with a sigh.
"I haven't been in here before but I do remember where this cabin is and it's a long walk back to the house. How about we take a quick flight instead?" Raxtus' eyes twinkled with mischief.
"Why not," Kendra said enthusiastically. "Do you want me to make another bandage?"
"No it doesn't help that much," he shrugged, patted his side and winced once before his mischievous smile returned.
She smiled, happy to see Raxtus acting more like his old dragon self. She packed up her day pack and walked out the door. He followed.
"Agad said changing back and forth from dragon to human was disorienting, but Navarog didn't seem to have any trouble. Wonder what Agad's problem was?" Kendra said remembering her conversation with both the shape shifting dragon and the wizard.
"I guess I will find out," Raxtus shrugged, he didn't seem worried.