Title: Dragon Trainers

Author: Alta Lemur!!! (love the latin)

Rating: err… PG-13?

Pairing: J/S eventually

Spoilers: none!... I think

Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't make money. Don't sue!

Summary: AU shounen ai. Night falls and the sun rises. Watch the rising and falling of love in a world of magic and dragons. (probably not going to be as sappy as the summary)



The woods were an entity of themselves. Soft light of the evening spilled through bright living green leaves, creating a light and dark patchwork like that of a master glass maker. Numerous heavenly songbirds sung songs of delight and hope, waiting for that special little female bird to notice. Gentle brooks splashed against smooth rocks like the caress of old friends.

All of this was beyond the notice of a turmoiled mind. Brows furrowed in concentration, one Seto Kaiba, journeyman dragon trainer, sat in what would be a very uncomfortable position if his mind was anywhere near his physical body at the moment. Instead he was withdrawn within himself, attempting once again what had eluded him for so long, inner peace.

For a time now, Seto's disposition had been altering. His own emotional state had seemed slightly less in his own control each passing day. At the very beginning, it was just this feeling that would nag at the edges of his awareness, soon passing once he claimed sleep. It had grown until the young dragon trainer would often find himself doing things beyond his normal reasoning. The final straw had been one evening when he had snapped at his little brother. After seeing tears well up in little Mokuba's eyes at his raised voice, Seto decided he needed to eliminate whatever was changing him.

And so, this was how Seto found himself taking his journeyman quest early. It wasn't as strange, since he had ended up attracting a dragon companion earlier than a child normally would have. All in all, he had close to the same amount of years as a normal dragon apprentice would have. As soon as he was able to ask his old master, a graying man with no more dragons to attend to but the only master dragon trainer in Seto's province, to look after his younger brother, he was off.

This day turned out to be like every other day since the beginning of Seto's journeyman quest three months ago. He would begin by various rituals, sometimes cleaning rituals for the body and soul, sometimes strengthening rituals for endurance, sometimes the random ritual that he hoped would be the solution. All would leave him no more than a sometimes cloying smell of incense or "holy" oils. Then he would begin hours of meditation in order to stabilize his mind, search his soul, and find his center, or at least that's what his teacher had always said he should accomplish by it.

The frustrated youth remembered when he first began meditating. Back then it had only made him drowsy, although eventually he had found peace a few years into his training. However, the solace found within meditation ended when his moods had altered. Since then, his inner self resembled very much his name, turmoil. It was as if a great grasping cloud of his inner mind's own making had taken a hold of his normal thoughts. So subtle in its influence, yet it obscured everything in its hold.

Seto finally sighed and gave up for the day. He was no longer even physically at peace. Instead of the relaxed posture and facial mask he had been taught to wear, he showed the frustration he felt. Standing up, the aggravated youth stretched out his long limbs, hearing a few joints pop. He had definitely been too tense while meditating.

Seto felt at least a bit better when he sensed the approach of his dragon companion. Almost a warm pleasant sensation at the back of his mind told the dragon trainer where his dragon was at all times. Ever since the first lessons as a dragon trainer, his attachment to his dragon companion had steadily increased. Seto knew from his lessons with his master that he would also form slight mental links to other dragons that he trained for mages and sorcerers once he became a master dragon trainer, but he was glad for the fact that he would only share the full strength of this special bond with one dragon. And he was pretty sure that she seemed rather boastful about having a human all to herself.

Turning toward where he could now hear her approaching through some underbrush, Seto saw a young dragon fresh from a hunt. His beautiful Blue Eyes was rather young for dragon years, under fifty years old, but that didn't stop her from overtaking humans in height by at least two heads, and that was only up to her shoulder. Seto had witnessed once when a gang of robbers approached him at the beginning of his journeyman quest that once standing on her hind legs and at her full height, his fierce metallic dragon was pants-shitting scary, or at least from where the robbers where standing. He almost pitied the two who ended up twisting a knee and having to hop away as quickly as possible.

Now his dragon companion was standing underneath those stain glass leaves, the light reflecting off of her metallic hide. She was carrying a deer in her mouth, which Seto could have sworn was formed into a grin. Before Seto had set out on his own, the most she was ever able to catch was the odd rabbit or a wild wolf that bothered local sheep. That's all that was around the village Seto had lived and trained, that and sheep that his Blue Eyes would sometimes whimper at not being allowed to catch. Now she zealously brought Seto her hunts each day, as if flaunting her amazing ability to catch such a quick footed creature and give her human companion what she thought to be the tastiest food around. She loved venison!

Seto had somewhat gotten used to animals with bright red puncture wounds in their throats, or broken spines. He had, after all, been born in a small village where everyone pretty much bought their animals alive and prepared them in their own homes. In fact, after his mother had passed on, he had the responsibility to butcher the meat to feed himself and Mokuba. So the young dragon trainer simply imagined that the animals his Blue Eyes brought him were like the sheep that he had prepared in the past.

'Eat the deer!'

Seto looked up from the place the deer had fallen to his Blue Eyes, who had deposited herself on the ground sitting up and was looking between him and her little 'present' to her human. Seto shook his head.

"How many times have I told you that I can't eat things raw?" The metallic dragon scoffed as he spoke. "Can you go find some wood to build a cooking fire while I field dress it?"

Torn between being happy for the expectant meal and being grumpy over usual delay for it, his dragon obliged and got to her feet in search for dry timber. Seto sighed and got to work at preparing his and his dragon's meal. After he was mostly done with the deer, Seto began to get other food out of his pack to make something besides meat for his dinner. He found that he had enough potatoes left to make stew. He smiled and got other things out that he would need, like a spit to roast the meat.

Blue Eyes returned and started to make some semblance of a stack of wood. She cleared an area with a few small sweeps of her claws and arranged the wood how she wanted it. She looked at the pile of wood a bit nervously, as if the sticks would turn into snakes. Seto felt the familiar nervousness of his dragon and went to her side. He placed a soothing hand on her flank and looked at the wood pile with her.

'Calm down,' he whispered into her mind.

It was a part of a dragon trainer's job to teach dragons to use their dragon's breath usefully and not just create massive amounts of chaos at every use. Blue Eyes didn't have much of a problem with her control, until one day she hadn't figured on one of Seto's smelly pouches (how was she suppose to know it was sulfur!) would be near to a log she was practicing on. Apparently Seto hadn't noticed either as he was doing some silly human thing at the time, but he was close by when it happened. He had to be for her to be able to use dragon's breath at that young an age. She thanked the High Dragon that Seto hadn't gotten more than a first degree burn on his left arm and shoulder, but she still became nervous about starting campfires, and for some reason only campfires. Blowing up trees was no problem, but the innocent little campfire seemed to mock her.

She put that aside when she felt the calming balm that was the presence of Seto in her mind. At times she would picture that her ability to breathe lightning was a blue magic stone inside her head. If she let it go, it would break a lot of things. But Seto's presence was a confident hand placed on that stone, to help her take a hold of it herself. She placed her own mental claws over that icy stone of power inside her mind, and also over Seto's mental hand.

She opened her eyes and calmly looked at the pile of wood. She inhaled. There was a spark in her mouth as her life force and her magic swirled about, growing and growing with the brightness of that icy stone turned translucent glass. Seto's mental hand shifted a bit inside her mind, pressing down on the stone, reining her in. She tightened her grip on the stone. Its brightness lessened somewhat and became more opaque again. The spark in her mouth was smaller now and perfectly suited to start a fire for roasting venison. She let her lightening breath fly and it landed squarely on the wood.

Blue Eyes beamed. She had done it perfectly! No over burning it and no having to do it twice because it had been too small of a spark! She practically pranced in place and Seto patted her flank affectionately. He then sat down next to the fire and began cooking his stew and their venison. Blue Eyes happily plopped down next to him, wrapping her tail behind and around him in her protectiveness.

Once all the cooking was done, Seto had pushed Blue Eyes' claws away from sneaking some of the half-cooked venison about five times. When Blue Eyes was finished with her meal but Seto was still spooning some of his stew away, she couldn't help but think about earlier in the day before she had caught the deer. From what she could feel over their link, Seto hadn't come any closer to solving this problem he had. It worried her because it made him have to leave his little brother, and he seemed to get more and more frustrated. She didn't like that Seto could help her with her problems, physical and mental, while she could only ensure his physical safety. If she had been an older dragon, then maybe she would be wise enough to seek the solution.

The vexed dragon sighed slightly. Reflexively, she held Seto with her tail more snuggly. Seto just leaned back against her a bit more and continued with his stew. Eventually Blue Eyes decided that she could at least talk to him more about it, even if she couldn't solve it with some arcane and powerful magic like an older dragon could.

'Seto…?'

Seto paused with a spoon half way to his mouth and turned toward the craning neck and slightly worried face of his dragon. 'Yes?'

If she were in a slightly more carefree mood, Seto would have been treated to the sight of a dragon chuckling, which sounded a lot like a low growl to anyone who wasn't a dragon trainer, at his silly expression. Or at least the young dragon thought putting utensils with watery food dripping from them halfway to your mouth was a funny thing to see.

'Are you progressing any in thinking training?' She didn't know what else to call what Seto did all day. He sat around and thought. Then he would be dissatisfied with that and try to think in a different posture, or with a different mantra, or a different environment. She knew he was doing some kind of training inside his mind, so she just called it his thinking training.

Seto sighed and put his spoon back into his bowl, also placing it on the ground. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back on his Blue Eyes. "No. I don't know what's wrong. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be striving towards. I just know that I'm not getting there." He looked into the still burning fire with a look of obvious frustration.

Blue Eyes nudged his shoulder slightly with her muzzle, trying to comfort him enough to switch back into mind speech. She didn't suppose that his voice was bad for a human, low like his mental voice, but it soothed her much more to feel their link hum like a plucked guitar string whenever he talked to her.

After a moment of silence, he did seem to improve. 'Maybe we should try something new altogether.' Blue Eyes looked somewhat miffed. What hadn't they tried already? However, he continued before she could question. 'I'm a journeyman. Maybe I should just act like a normal one instead of sitting in the woods meditating all the time.'

Well, Blue Eyes didn't exactly know what it was journeymen did. All her mother had told her about dragon trainers was that they were nice and helped dragons, even defending them against other humans. Her mother had said that dragon trainers were the reason why dragons hadn't gone extinct in the Great Uprising so many centuries ago. But her mother had never mentioned specifics such as journeyman quests.

Blue Eyes just looked confusedly into the equal blue eyes of her human companion. 'What does a journeyman do? Isn't meditating enough?'

Seto sighed slightly. 'No, actually most don't bother with meditation. I just thought that meditation would be the best approach towards a problem inside me.' He paused for a bit. 'Most go from city to city, or village to village, and hone in their skills in practical applications.' Again a considering pause, 'Perhaps we shouldn't do either of these. What some journeymen also do is go from one master trainer to another. Sometimes it's considered your last pay of respect to your elders before you become their equal. A journeyman dragon trainer can approach older masters and stay with them for one or two months and they must listen to whatever that master trainer has to say to them in advice. It's a slightly older method, most journeymen like their freedom, but I think we can get what we're after if we find someone older. My old master didn't have any answers, but perhaps one that lives in a bigger city will have an answer.'

Seto seemed to have genuine faith in his new plan. His face shone with new hope. Blue Eyes beamed back at him, a mere show of teeth to an outside observer. Well, at least now they had a solid plan. Then she suddenly became excited over the prospect of going to a big city.

'When do we leave?!' She wagged her tail excitedly across the ground. Of all things she always wanted to see the big cities with their giant towers and huge outdoor eating restaurants that specially catered to traveling mages with large familiars and dragon trainers with their dragons. Maybe they'd even go to one by the ocean where she could see the sun rise over the giant blue expanse.

Seto chuckled at the evident eagerness of the youthful dragon. 'How's tomorrow? If we wake early, we can be off before the sun rises and the traveling becomes difficult.' She seemed pleased with this as she gave a few heartfelt thumps of her tail close to Seto's proximity.

The dragon trainer chuckled again and packed everything up for the night and their journey tomorrow. He had his sleeping roll out next to the dying embers of the fire and to the warm flank of his dragon. The stars were beginning to come out. The first one to emerge, as always, was the guiding star Hope. Seto whispered its name in the darkness, barely heard above the rhythmic breathing of Blue Eyes. Seto was going to take it as a good sign, that there was hope to be held, and that he would have guidance. Perhaps, if the old tales were true, his ancestors were holding the star up in heaven in order to watch him through life. He held a soft smile on his face as he curled closer to his dragon companion's warmth. Perhaps even his mother was watching him and would guide him through the next part of his journeyman quest.





A/N: Tada! How do you like it so far? Suggestions, Feedback, go ahead. Yes, this WILL be a romance story, or at least my sad attempt at one. Take a wild guess as to the pairing. Lol.