No Greater Disaster

AN: As the last chapter dealt more about how Raya was affected by the battle, this chapter delves a bit further into Pengu's thoughts and how he's dealing with his developing feelings for her. And we have an appearance from one of our old friends at the end, too.

Disclaimer: I do not own Raya and the Last Dragon.

Chapter 9:

Despite Raya's insistence they leave for Tail as soon as possible, he eventually convinced her to at least return to Tong's village with their remaining forces. As much as he shared her sentiment in wanting to find both Ronin and Amba, he wanted to tell Halla he was alright and send her on her way back to Heart with a message for Jagan. "Tell him my vacation with Raya will take a bit longer than I thought because we decided to go to Tail," he had requested of her.

She had reluctantly agreed. She was absolutely terrified of him getting hurt or worse—he was rather important among his kind—but he assured her that he would be fine. She hadn't been convinced, but she knew there was nothing she could do or say that would change his mind.

Since her wounds were pretty much healed at this point, she left not long after they spoke. Without the rain, she would have to either go by boat or swim, but Tong was generous enough to arrange a boat for her to use and a small escort for her. During their conversation, Raya restocked their provisions, and the two of them finally left in the early afternoon.

They were currently on an easterly heading…which didn't make sense to him. "Why are we heading east if the camp we are looking for is southeast of our position?" He turned his head to glance back at his rider while continuing to run east.

"Because the southeast part of Tail is a large area to search without anything else to go on. And that whole region is nothing but desert. Without knowing where we're going, we could easily run out of water or get lost while trying to search the area blindly," she explained. "We're going east because I thought of a way we might get some more information. Emphasis on might." He looked away for a moment, not really liking the uncertainty in her claim. But, not seeing an alternative, he looked back and nodded for her to continue. "I figure there's a chance someone might have seen or heard something about the camp we're looking for, so I thought we should ask around the cities and taverns."

"Hmm…" he hummed skeptically. "I assume that includes the Shrimporium?" he wondered, thinking for a moment this was simply a ploy for her to visit another friend of hers.

"Well…yeah," she admitted. "It's a popular restaurant that a lot of people eat at, and Boun is probably the only one in Tail that would help us without making us pay for the information. It's as good a place to start as any," she explained a bit defensively.

He nodded, agreeing with her logic, and with no other questions for the moment, he turned his gaze forward once again. Since they left rather late in the day, they decided to stop about an hour before sunset. He was a bit sore again, the extra weight from the additional supplies Raya grabbed in Spine making it harder to run for as long.

Then again, he shouldn't complain too much. Normally, he would only spend two or three hours a day playing with his siblings, and that was about as active as he usually was. Now, however, the constant endurance sprinting—with added weight on his back, too—was doing wonders for him. His entire body felt a bit more toned than it used to be, and he felt better than he had in a while. It seemed Jagan was right. While he hadn't exactly let himself go, he had been focusing too much time on others and not enough on himself.

Every upside had a downside, though. The extra weight may be helping him get in shape again, it was absolutely murder on his back. He was only twenty-five years old; he should not have to suffer through this much back pain! He contorted himself every which way, trying to ease the tension, when he found the magical sweet spot, and his back popped like a string of firecrackers from Talon. He slumped to the ground, the relief almost immediate. "Are…you okay?" he heard Raya ask him, her voice a strange mix of amused and concerned.

He looked up at her, only moving his eyes, and just blinked wearily. "I'll take that as a no," she answered for him. She crouched down next to him, and from how close they were, he could see that her hair was wet and smell the scented oils she used.

It smelled nice, and he had to almost force himself from taking a big whiff of it. At that moment, he decided to change his thought process to something less…maddening. It didn't matter how he tried to rationalize it, his heart wouldn't listen to his brain when it said 'no'. "I will be fine," he finally answered, turning his gaze to the fire.

She shrugged and stood. "If you say so." She sat down on a log on the other side of the fire, and wrung some more water out of her hair, flipping it back behind her when she was done. "But you will tell me when you are hurting, right? As much as I want to catch this guy, I don't want to hurt you in the process."

"Of course," he agreed. A silence fell between them as they both stared into the fire, yet his gaze would drift unbidden over to her every so often.

"There's a small town not too far from here," she spoke, bringing him out of his internal conflict. "I can hire a boat to take us downriver if you would rather do that," she offered, looking at him for his answer.

"That would be preferable," he replied and turned away, signaling the end of this conversation. It's not that he didn't want to talk to her—far from it. He wanted to be closer to her—bury his snout into her hair, nuzzling her the entire time.

And that. That right there. That was a problem.

He was hoping that if he kept her at a bit of a distance, these…urges…would go away. It's kind of odd that he wanted to push her away now since he had mended their friendship when Raya was being distant with him not too long ago. But these feelings—this longing—he felt whenever he even looked at her had increased tenfold since he had first discovered them a mere five days ago.

Honestly, it was beginning to scare him. He had never been in a relationship before. He had never even felt the need to be in one. He had been content with the way things were, but all that changed when Raya entered the picture. Why though? Why would he have these feelings for Raya—a human—when he had never had these feelings for another of his own kind? It's not like he had never had potential suitors before, either. His reputation and position had tempted more than a few female dragons—including Halla—into taking a chance, but he had never felt this way towards any of them.

What he needed was for these feeling of his to go away. He didn't want to deal with them anymore, but the only way for him to forget about them is to create distance—preferably physical—between the two of them. Of course he couldn't simply abandon Raya and find Amba on his own. He came to her for help because he had actually needed her help. However, he vowed right then and there that as soon as they found Amba, he was leaving. He was going to go back home without her—Sisu could be mad at him all she wanted, this was to prevent himself from going insane. And from there on, he would try to avoid Raya as much as possible until he could get his emotions in check.

Sleep was illusive that night. And when he finally did fall asleep, he found he couldn't escape her even in his dreams. He woke up several times, and each time it seemed to become more difficult to fall back asleep, so he finally decided to just stay awake. Judging from the position of the moon, he had only gotten around four hours of intermittent sleep.

He almost fell back asleep a few times, but he forced himself to stay awake. The reason for that was he could—somewhat—control his thoughts while awake, but he couldn't control his dreams. It was when the sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon that he got up and walked over to the shore of the lake.

When he got there, he took a moment to look at his reflection, and he slumped when he saw his slightly bloodshot eyes and the small bags underneath them. He just stared at his own reflection and sighed in resignation. "I can't do this," he whispered to himself, forgoing his usual way of proper speaking.

But he had to, no matter what. He dunked his head under the water, and the cooler temperature woke him up a bit more. When the water stilled once again, his reflection looked a bit better, too, but he knew this was only a temporary solution. If things were this bad now, he dreaded the days, maybe weeks, ahead of him. "Water of life, give me strength," he quietly pleaded.

"Pengu!" he heard Raya call, no doubt wondering where he had gone off to while she was sleeping.

His head shot up, his momentary excitement ruthlessly quashed by his frustration at himself. "This is going to be a long day," he muttered. "Coming!" he called back, trying his best to sound normal.

She was focused on repacking her things when he returned to their small campsite. "I thought we should leave early. That way we'd have a better chance of find a boat, and…" When she looked up, she trailed off and studied his face. "Did you get any sleep last night?" she asked with mild concern.

He shook his head. "Not really. I was having…" he trailed off for a moment. 'I was having dreams about you' would definitely cause some raised eyebrows, so he decided on, "…nightmares again." He said it in a tone that would hopefully make her think the pause was from not wanting to admit something that he felt ashamed of.

She nodded, seeming to understand. "What about?" she asked.

He fumbled a bit, not really expecting that question. "A-About Amba," he lied.

She just nodded, accepting his answer as if she had expected it. "We'll find her," she promised, and he nodded appreciatively at her. After that, she finished packing while he waited, and then she took her usual spot on his back.

True to her word, he spotted a village just under two hours after they left, so he landed and waited while Raya found a boat they could hire. It was a rather small village, he noticed. As Raya explained to him earlier, it had been built not long after Kumandra united again as a trading post between Tail and Spine. There were only a handful of boats at the port, and he estimated that there was somewhere between two hundred and three hundred people wandering around the area. And most of those seemed to belong to different caravans.

He had been standing off to the side for nearly twenty minutes, watching the goings-on of this little hamlet, when Raya approached him again. "Alright, we've got a boat," she told him and motioned for him to follow. He did, and she glanced back to make sure he was after a few steps like she normally did.

Their boat happened to be a covered barge for ferrying goods and people. Aside from the middle-aged boat captain, the only thing they had to share the boat with was assorted cargo like food and treated leather. Thankfully, their spot was at the front, and the pile of cargo separated them from the captain, giving them some privacy.

Raya sat down against the crates of food and just watched the scenery as it passed by, but the gentle rocking motion of the boat started lulling him to sleep. He tried to fight it off as long as he could, but eventually his eyes slid shut and didn't open. Just as last night, his sleep was restless, but he started to relax when he felt someone stroking the side of his face.

He opened his eyes and saw a dream version of Raya outlined by white light sitting with his head in her lap. She was smiling at him while stroking the side of his face, and he sighed in contentment, his eyes sliding shut once more.

He woke up to the feeling of something pressing against his side. When he looked, Raya was leaning back against him. Her hat was down, and she was breathing softly. Since the sun was high in the sky, she was probably just taking a nap like he had been. He didn't blame her for choosing to rest against him as her only alternative was the hard, wooden crates, though he wished she had chosen the crates. It wasn't because it made him physically uncomfortable—far from it. It felt…right.

Which was another problem.

As he watched her sleep peacefully, though, the first seeds of doubt began growing in his mind. Why were these feelings so wrong? His flimsy excuse was that any personal feelings would get in the way of finding Amba, but anyone else would call that a big load of dung. His other excuse was a bit more believable: he was a dragon and she was a human. However, there had been human/dragon relationships in the past. They were extremely rare, but he had heard of at least two before.

He supposed the main reason he was afraid was just that: he was afraid. Afraid that Raya didn't feel the same way about him. He had lost friends before, and it always hurt. But if he lost Raya's friendship because of this…it hurt just thinking about it. He didn't want to lose her friendship ever, so he resolved himself to get over these feelings.

As he laid his head back down to take another nap, it seemed his internal confession helped. His dreams were free of her presence, and his heart didn't skip a beat when he next woke to her gently shaking him awake. "Dinner's ready," she told him before heading to the back of the boat.

In the following days, they continued to make their way downriver towards the Shimporium's main port of call. Thankfully, his symptoms seemed to subside as he no longer felt like he was having heartburn every time he looked at Raya. Whenever he wasn't napping, he was swimming or eating, but finally, a week later, the town the were looking for entered their view.

Once they docked, Raya paid the ferryman the other half of their fee, and they made their way down to the other end of the docks. If the ridiculously long line wasn't clue enough, the smell of cooking shrimp told him all he needed to know.

Raya didn't even bother with the line—getting more than a few angry yells as she walked to the front. He followed behind her, and those who felt the need to verbally accost Raya quickly quietened when they saw him. Captain Boun—or Captain Pop-and-Lock as Sisu called him, and he could see where she got the nickname from—was busy giving his guests both a dinner and a show with his signature cooking style. When Raya stopped on the deck just behind him and smirked, calling out, "Hey, Boun!" the young chef almost threw his spoon in surprise.

"Raya!" he yelled happily, letting his dad take over at the stove while he visited. He hugged his friend, and Raya smiled, genuinely happy to see him again. "And you brought…!" he trailed off, his excitement turned to confusion. "That's not Sisu," he continued simply, looking up at Raya for clarification.

"No, Sisu had to stay behind," she confirmed. Then she smiled and gestured over at him, "But I did bring Pengu."

At that, Boun's mouth fell open, and he really did drop his spoon. The awestruck teen bowed hastily as he realized who's presence he was in. "It's an honor to finally meet you, Pengu! Sorry I didn't recognize you."

As always, the reactions he got from Boun and the other gathered people amused him, and he shook his head with a chuckle. "There is no need for such formality. Any friend of Raya is a friend of mine."

Boun looked up at him with wide eyes that soon went half-lidded as he smirked. Then he said the only word that needed to be said in this situation. "Cool…"

AN: So yeah, Pengu's got it BAD for Raya. I hope it doesn't sound too creepy or like he's obsessed or something like that. This is the first time I've written something like this before, but I tried to give a reason why he's feeling the way he is. He's never been in a relationship before, and neither has he ever had a crush on anyone else, so these feelings are new to him which is why he's feeling like a lovesick fool right now. Anyways, let me know how I did.

Until Next Time

AdmiralCole22