Woah... So many reviews on that last chapter. I'll quickly answer questions before I start on the next installment of this story.
My muse has this thing about Zelgadiss and cliffs. As for the chapter titles... They are a reference to an album. Bonus points to whomever can guess which album and whose album.
Thank you to repeat reviewers Moro, Lauren, Sharon Toggle, and Mynuet. Thank you also to first-time reviewers Aloria, Faith, and Shizukanaryu.

Slayers is the creation of Hajime Kanzanka and Rui Araizumi. I don't own it; they and a lot of other people do. I'm not making any profit off of this story.

+===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+

Idylls
+=== A Slayers Fanfic by Ryo Hoshi
3 +===+ Drops, Rain, and Sea

Water.
Falling, hitting his skin hard, feeling like hailstones.
Feeling...
Like...?
Zelgadiss looked at his skin. It was a pale shade of rosy-cream beige, and most definitely not blue stone. He jumped up and...
He groaned quietly. His ribs still hurt from Amelia's hug. Had she only bruised them, or had she broken them? He suspected that they were broken; a hug from somebody with a golem's strength...
Then, the rest of Zelgadiss's brain started to work.
Of course I'm still human, he thought. I'm not lucky enough to just wake up a chimera again one day He sighed, and stared at the fire, wondering if it was worth the effort of restoring.
It had been a strange dream. A chimera, in a world of humans. It was so close to what he had wanted years ago, when he had still been deluded by the old tales, which said that being a pure human was a wonderful condition, and being a chimera was a curse -- just like it had been in his dream.
Of course, that had been before the plague swept through, a few generations ago. Most people then had agreed to become chimeras, after it had been discovered that chimeras were immune to it. Now, there were few people who were fully human.
Most of them would become chimeras themselves, given the chance.
Zelgadiss was not at all sure why he had wanted to become human.
It was horrible being fully human. He was weak and powerless, and even the most casual of contacts with another person could result in his injury.
He didn't even look right. His hair, which had once been lovely silver wires with lavender highlights, was now soft and a strange dark purple color. His skin, which had been a nice shade of blue, with good granite pebbles, was now soft and a pink color that would have been a good sign of sickness before.
His companions didn't mind his weakness. Lina, with her lovely copper hair and red agate pebbles, and Gourry, with his long golden hair and riverstone pebbles, simply ignored it. He was glad that the fourth regular member of their group had managed to teach him some nice, basic healing spells.
Zelgadiss sighed as he thought of her. Amelia was beautiful. Her white marble pebbles were all in just the right spots -- not that it would have been that easy for one to be in a bad spot. Her silver hair had a natural black to it, not the grey-black of tarnish.
She was the most lovely woman he had ever seen.
And he couldn't even...
He closed his eyes, feeling the old, familiar feeling of something -- helplessness? -- hit him like a kick in the gut. He was too fragile. What to her would be a gentle hug would bruise him. A passionate embrace? That could easily be his death.
But he wanted so much to be able to show her how he felt about her.

He didn't want to have his blood on her hands.

Zelgadiss sighed, and looked at the sky. It wasn't getting any lighter, as far as he could tell, and it didn't look like it was going to stop raining anytime soon. He shivered and pulled his cloak closer to himself.
He really didn't think he was lucky that nothing had attacked while he had fallen asleep. He was, after all, supposed to be on watch. But he didn't think anything would be too inclined to attack in this weather.
The weather promised to be wet and muddy. This did not bode well for Zelgadiss. With his skin, he'd feel the cold and damp, while the others' main worry would be the possibility of moss or mildew. The mud, a detail to them, could easily make his own progress slower than their own.
He didn't like feeling like he was a burden on the others, but he knew he was. He wasn't as fast, as strong, or as tough as they were. He dragged them into out-of-the-way places, delaying their own progress to their goals simply so they could protect him.
This time he was taking them to a little village on the coast, which according to the rumors had not been touched as greatly by the plague and by fear of it. The rumors said that there was a sorcery lab there where a person could get turned into a chimera -- which would have made it one of the few sorcery labs that still did that.
Zelgadiss tried not to hope. He had his hopes dashed too many times already. He didn't want that kind of hurt this time.

+===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+ +===+

For faster writing, comments and complements enhance my motivation to bother. Those and chocolate enhance my muse's speed. (Dark chocolate, please.)