✧Jeaha✧

'I'll be back,' Yona says with a smile. She looks like a different girl now that she has a bow again, bold and confident.

She turns, and I grasp her hand. 'Wait.' She looks back at me. 'Be careful.' I don't want to say it, but I have to. 'I can't come flying to your rescue, y'know?'

'I won't go far,' she says, and runs off, disappearing behind a tangle of branches bathed in red light.

My leg pulses, and a tremor flashes through my stomach. Even though she's probably fine, whenever I can't protect her… it makes me uneasy. Curse this dragon's blood. I wonder if the others feel this way.

The others. I've had no time or strength to reach out to them. I try to sense them, but I'm too weak. My head's clouded with fog. I'll have to wait.

With nothing to distract me, my mind starts racing. I know I got us far enough away from Tea-Shai, so that's over and done with. But as for where we are now… In a slit of sky above, deeply wooded mountains tower overhead. Maybe somewhere to the west?

We can't stay here forever. Tonight, probably, but after that we'll have to start moving. My leg cramps, and I wince. I don't know if I could stand up right now if my — no, Yona's — life depended on it. At least the bandages hide the real giveaways.

My coat doesn't reach to the ground. A boot on one foot, bandages on the other. The contrast let alone the size difference between the two is enough to make you do a double take. All I can do is hope it's not so obvious when I'm walking.

A wild screech echoes. I start, before I realise Yona must have made a kill. It couldn't have been her getting hurt. Couldn't.

The dusk is giving way to twilight.

A scuffling, dragging noise. My fingers close around a blade. 'Yona?'

'Yeah?' she says after a moment, panting.

'Sorry, I can't see you.' The noise starts up again. '…What are you doing?'

'It's heavy!' she says.

I raise an eyebrow. 'What, did you bring down a bear?'

'Stop teasing, Jeaha,' she says, and appears, dragging a deer by its legs.

'Why didn't you sling it over your shoulders?'

She stops to glare at me. 'My clothes are filthy already — the last thing I need is more bloodstains!'

'Fair enough.'

She drags the deer to my side. I unsheathe a hunting knife, and start on the messy work. 'See what you can do for firewood,' I say.

She runs off again. I gut and clean the deer as fast as I can. I'm normally fine with blood and guts, but I'm not at my 'normal' right now.

I roughly bundle up the mess. A sour, metallic smell fills the air, and my stomach turns. Yona comes back, and swaps the carcass for firewood. With a screwed-up face, she walks off and flings the carcass into the woods.

We work in silence, cutting meat, piling up firewood, making mistakes and getting through it.

I pass Yona a chain with bits of metal and stone threaded on it. 'Scrape them together,' I say. Sparks pour everywhere and she shrieks. 'Over the fire, not your lap,' I say, trying not to smile.

The fire's heart starts to glow, and flames lick through the tangled twigs and branches. Yona's eyes sparkle. 'I thought we'd have to spend forever lighting it — what is that?'

'It's a flint. I keep it sewn into my coat — it's not the sort of thing you want to lose.'

She settles down by the fire, chin in her hands, the warm glow reflected in her eyes. 'Ah!' she says. 'Sorry, I forgot the food.'

She starts threading the meat onto twigs, and digging the skewers into the dirt around the fire. I know she can't cook; it'll be charred at best and raw at worst. I watch her. 'Ow, it's hot,' she says under her breath, wiping hot juices off her fingers. She's trying hard. I smile.

She looks at me warily. 'What are you smiling about?'

Gah, she caught me. I'm off my game. 'We're alive; I'm on a dinner date with my favourite girl; the list goes on and on.'

She scoffs, but smiles. 'Here,' she says, handing me a skewer. 'Enjoy.'

How does she look so cute?

She reaches to get herself a skewer too. The meat's burning hot, but I wolf it down in seconds. Earthy, bitter — well, burnt, really — but somehow sweet, too. Yona turns back to me. 'What?!' she yells. 'How do you eat so fast!?'

'Well, it would do injustice to the divinely talented cook and her equally heavenly food not to devour it the moment I receive it,' I say, and wink.

She looks at me with half-closed eyes. 'You must be recovering, because your ability to spout nonsense seems to have returned.' She sighs, and hands me her skewer.

I chuckle. It feels good to get back to our normal — me trying, and getting innocently put down in a way that just makes me try even harder.

We eat in silence, enjoying the food, and the glow of firelight in the dark. A pile of wooden skewers are all that's left, and we throw them on the fire. The cold is seeping into the air. Yona holds her hands to the flames.

'We should try and sleep,' I say.

She nods. 'Mmm.' She reaches for her cloak, but her fingers grip air. I feel a pang. Cloaks are really just blankets you wear as clothing; she must be cold.

'I'm sorry.' She looks up, confused. 'I'll buy you another one, when we get somewhere.'

She shakes her head. 'Don't worry. I'll just sleep close to the fire.'

She's already sitting next to the fire, and she's already cold. The fire's tiny — pathetic, really. It'll probably burn itself out before dawn.

I hesitate, then say it. 'You can sleep beside me, if you want.'

I almost said 'with' and had to bite my tongue.

She glances at me, eyes questioning, and nods. 'Okay.'

She didn't read into what I said. But then again, I wasn't asking. Innocent and oblivious, as usual.

I lie down, on my left side, trying to spare my leg where I can. Her hair brushes my neck as she curls up beside me. A hot rush burns in my chest and shoots through my body, but I fight it, and push it off. I'm not here to get what I want from her, I'm here to help her. And helping her doesn't involve romancing her under the stars. Hak, you have to tell me how you deal with this — her shoulders press against my chest and my breath hitches — because it's killing me.

'So what's the plan?' Yona asks. 'Do you have a plan, yet?'

Kiss you until I can't breathe? She turns over, her nose almost touching mine, and I quickly wipe any expression from my face. Her eyes look like they have stars in them, tiny, glittering constellations. 'Are you all right?' she asks.

Not really. But her face, her eyes, bring me back to earth. I don't know what I'm feeling, whether this is the dragon's blood or something else all together. But now isn't the time for it. I start to relax. 'Fine. Just tired.'

She smiles, and turns back over. I undo my coat, and shelter her beneath the fabric. 'The plan?' she asks.

'Taskmaster,' I mutter under my breath, and she lightly elbows me in the ribs. 'Ow. Get some rest. Tomorrow, we'll need to start moving.' I'm already fighting to keep my eyes open. 'Find a village that hasn't gone dragon-crazy. Get some — '

She interrupts. 'Hey. So… what was that?'

Referring to… everything.

I groan and run a hand over my face. 'Do we really have to go into it? It's late…'

'Yeah, d_ right we have to go into it!' she snaps. 'We stumble across this village and find out that they know you're the Green Dragon — and the next thing we know they're trying to load you into a cage and return you to your "master"! I don't know about anyone else but I'd like a little clarification here!'

'For love of the Crimson Dragon King you and Gija can sound so alike, you little rich brats…'

'Jeaha!'

'I didn't say I wasn't going to answer so just… stop.'

She shuts up, and waits for my answer.

'Look, I'm going to make this quick. And we're not talking about it.' I line up the words and grit my teeth, before forcing the words out. 'Not all the dragons are worshiped like in Gija's village. The Green Dragons were kept in chains over the centuries, others waiting for their "master," the Crimson King, to collect them. It was slavery. I eventually made a break for it and wound up with Gi-Gan's crew. I thought I'd ditched my past, but it seems that the Green Dragon village put a bounty on my head and with our luck, we fell into one of the villages out for the bounty.'

She says nothing. Her violet eyes are too wide under the moonlight. Then she drops her head against my chest, allowing herself only one pained whisper. 'Oh, Jeaha…'

'All right, that's enough. Don't pity me — sympathy gives me a bad rash.'

'You're terrible, and I'm not.' She looks up and cups my face in her hands. 'It's just… how could they keep someone as beautiful as you in chains?'

...Wow. I haven't smiled in a while, come to think of it.

I chuckle, and say, 'Because people can sure as h_ can take blood oaths the wrong way. But yeah. You're literally my master. Crimson hair and the works. I don't think the village even had a clue when you were marching around and screaming at them.'

'But why didn't we just… tell them?' she asks in a daze. 'Maybe they would have let you go with me — '

'Yeah, let's tell the fanatics that you're the Crimson Dragon King, here to kick their butts and deprive them of their much longed-for bounty money. There's no way in h_ that wouldn't have made the situation worse.' I smirk. 'Ah, what can you do? It's the fate of handsome rogues like me to live with a price on our heads.'

All Yona says is, 'I'll claim you one day, Jeaha. I'll march into that Green Dragon village and tell them I already collected your sorry self way back when, in a trafficking ring in Awa.'

D_it, kiddo. You don't need to do that.

You've already claimed my heart a thousand times over.

I don't reply, merely breathing in the scent of her soft hair, of wood and flowers rather than perfume and ivory. 'Where were we?'

'The plan?'

'Right. We'll get on the road. Find a village. Get some stuff to patch ourselves up with. And I have no idea what we'll do after that but it's probably going to involve sore feet.'

'Will you be able to walk?' she asks. It's getting colder. My breath makes clouds in the air. I place an arm around her and draw her closer.

'I don't know.' I get an idea. 'Maybe you can whip up one of your famous crutches for me.'

She laughs. 'I'll try.' Her hand covers mine.

'Are you cold?'

'No. You're really warm,' she says. She rests her head on her arrow quiver, and her lips touch brush my hand. A sweet chill settles in my chest — I know it was an accident, a mistake in the dark, but when every touch and word from her is so innocent and often accidental, I treasure whatever I can get.

'Good night,' she says. Her voice sounds sleepy.

'Good night…' I say. I wait a few moments. Her breathing evens out. I gently drop a kiss into her hair. '…Yona.'

To be continued...