Prompt: 095. New Year.
Word Count: 906.
Rating: G Summary: Celebrations are noisy, social affairs. Touda likes neither, but still his favourite celebration is the noisiest of them all.
Author's Notes: It just had to be the Chinese New Year. What with Touda's animal form and all ...
Chinese New Year – Dragon Style
There was chaos on the streets of GenSouKai. Shouting and chanting mixed into deafening noise as people danced about in colourful festive clothes, children hopping around excitedly darting unexpectedly through the crowds wherever they shifted to make some room.
And the crowds were constantly shifting, everybody being always in motion causing the festive decorations and gowns to turn into a sea of moving patches of colour in the eye of any watchers. But Touda wasn't watching and he sincerely hoped that Tsuzuki wasn't fool enough to be down there either.
Maybe he should have warned his master. Tsuzuki was from Japan, after all, where they celebrated the New Year on December 31st. He hadn't even known that the real New Year was today and had come to visit purely by coincidence. Who knew what else they didn't know there!
Touda's first New Years celebration in GenSouKai had been a disaster. He'd known that the celebrations were loud and colourful of course. Back at home it had always been an unpleasant affair when the whole village was celebrating, but nothing there could have prepared him for the thousands of people that overcrowded the streets of the capital during the holidays. He'd been jostled shoved and actually trampled over on one occasion until he'd finally managed to flee onto a roof where he'd sat in misery with his ears ringing. Touda did not like crowds. Or noise.
For several years after that he'd fled the city entirely the moment the first festival preparations had begun.
And then one day he'd taken refuge in a nice quiet cave in the middle of nowhere and ran into a lost shiki-boy. The foolish little thing had been trying out his owl form, learning how to fly and forgotten to remember which direction he'd gone.
He hadn't known the name of his village either and getting a useful description out of the child had taken almost an hour of questioning. After all what kind of landmark was the name of the local baker or the fact that there was a cherry tree in the neighbour's garden? Clearly the little idiot didn't get out much.
Finally though the boy had remembered a bridge next to a waterfall which was a lot more distinctive and they'd set off for the kid's home.
They were only just out of sight of the cave, though, when the stupid child started complaining that he couldn't go on. His wings were hurting, he was exhausted, hungry ...
To make a long story short, Touda had run out of patience and carried the brat home on his back.
Only to be pressured by a suddenly wide awake owl-boy and his entire family to participate in the village's New Years celebration.
"I don't celebrate the New Year." Touda had grumbled.
"But why?" the little boy had asked wide eyed. "It's your celebration."
"Mine?" Touda had said raising an eyebrow incredulously.
"Well, you are a serpent-dragon, aren't you?"
"I'm a sky serpent, yes." Touda confirmed. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Well, aren't serpent-dragons supposed to dance to bring people luck for the new year?" the boy had insisted. "You're shirking your duty."
"Huh? What?"
And then the idiot child had dragged him into the town square where a bunch of villagers were dancing in a dragon costume and Touda had had to admit that this looked a lot more like him than SohRyu.
"Please!" the boy had begged. "Dance with them. I've always wanted to see a real dragon dance."
"Sky serpents don't dance on the ground." Touda had snorted. "That's why we're called Sky serpents."
"Then dance in the sky." the boy had said. "Show me how it's done."
And Touda had danced for the boy who maybe, just maybe, wasn't such an idiot after all, because that night Touda had realised that he did indeed love to dance and maybe the New Year was indeed his celebration, made for him to dance.
High in the sky above GenSouKai where he twisted and turned in figures no limbed creature would ever dream of he was free. Up here he was all alone with as much space as he wanted and the noise of the people below was a faint sound in the distance. He wasn't sure what they thought of his dance down there. In fact, he wasn't even sure they'd noticed he was up here, but then the last thing he wanted was for anybody to spoil his fun by coming up to join him.
Many hours later when the noise was beginning to die down as the people tired somebody did fly up to meet him, but it was only Tsuzuki and the sky was big enough for two after all, Touda decided.
"Touda, old friend!" Tsuzuki slung his arms around him to stabilise his slightly wobbly flight path and hugged him tightly.
Too much rice-wine, Touda diagnosed and stopped twisting before Tuzuki could accidentally slip off or get sick from all the motion.
"Have you been up here the whole time?" Tsuzuki asked with a slightly slurry voice. "You should have come down there. We had so much fun."
Touda shook his head. "I need room to dance."
"Dance?"
"Yes, I'm their dragon," he explained inclining his head towards the city below.
"You're a serpent," Tsuzuki stated.
"Not on the New Year," Touda said with a small grin. "Today I'm a dragon."