Sapphire Scales, a Rurouni Kenshin fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 4 - The Moon
She was so mad she wanted to rend him limb from limb. First the pure audacity of his sleeping practically next to her all night, especially when she had been too upset to notice him until she woke up. Why had he come back, anyway? He must have a death wish - well, she certainly wasn't going to oblige him; she wasn't completely uncivilized yet.
Then stripping stark naked right in front of her, then looking to see if she was a girl... Just thinking about it made her growl. Now she was going to be so embarrassed if he still refused to leave and kept seeing her naked, but she was a dragon. It was stupid to even consider wearing clothes.
'That does it,' she fumed. 'Next time I see you, I'm carrying you right over the mountains so you can't come back.' That would be mean, though...he might have family that was worried about him, though if he did, he didn't seem too worried about them in return. 'Stupid, infuriating little redhead...'
She remembered uncomfortably how he had been so polite, how he kept coming back despite his obvious fear. Who knew why he wouldn't leave, but the company was be kind of nice...it was just that she wanted equal company, which was impossible. Other dragons could barely communicate with her and could never understand her, and humans, even this one exception who didn't hate her on sight, were too fragile for her to live comfortably with. The little man...Kenshin...he was no equal in most respects, but neither was he a pet or some stranger she could write off. He understood her. He was like a disembodied voice, a huge consciousness with a tiny, almost insignificant body.
'Well...not quite insignificant,' she thought grudgingly. Her cheeks cooled with embarrassment as she suddenly recalled, against her will, the sight of him naked. 'As if anything could work between us,' she thought bitterly. She refused, refused to entertain the ridiculous notion that he could help her. It was too late, it had been too long. And no one, not even polite little Himura Kenshin, would be able to love her.
She heaved a great sigh and then got to her feet again. She had been sulking in the Secret Room, but the sight of its sad relics was depressing her again. She trudged back through the cave, and paused when she found Kenshin where she had left him. She bared her teeth in a smirk. He had managed to work his hand and shoulder free of the huge (to him) dirt pile, but his elbow was still awkwardly buried, as was the rest of him of course. He froze when he saw her, and they stared at each other. Then he asked, rather hopelessly, "Please?"
'Nope,' she thought in satisfaction. 'You can get free all by your lovely little self, you jerk.'
Once outside, she took flight and circled around for a minute, wondering idly where to go today. She passed over fields and little clumps of houses, with a road or two flowing over the land like brown streams. Bellowing herds of sheep and cows surged away from her shadow as she passed. Occasionally a human would look up at her and stare, their terrified expressions thankfully too far away to be seen.
Eventually a cheerful blue glimmering caught her eye, and she looked to see a waterfall in the distance, emptying into a lake. Having pleasant memories from a few previous visits, Kaoru approached and soared down to land above the lake. Water could be dangerous to a dragon, but only in cold weather; right now it was still warm enough for her to enjoy herself. Standing for a while at the height of the falls, Kaoru looked over the edge to watch the water cascading down endlessly, feeling peaceful from the constant rushing sound of the falls and the sensation of the current meeting resistance from her body's bulk.
When she was ready, she leaped over the edge and fell with the water down to the lake, spreading her wings to soften her landing. It was not enough to prevent a tremendous splash, and she watched with pleasure as waves rippled out to shore. Then she rolled onto her back and lay in the water for a long time, gazing up at the sky.
She watched the sun, staring straight into it with eyes that were bright with fires of their own. She watched the birds, who swooped and soared through the air like living pieces of joy. Her heart was with them more than with anything else, sharing their delight and envying their oblivious animal minds. None of them were imprisoned in their own bodies, or were afraid to go home for fear of facing little red-haired men again.
Kaoru frowned and sat up, water flowing down her back as if she was shedding a mantle of sky. Afraid? Her? Of a suicidal little human? 'I'll show you who's afraid,' she growled, then closed her eyes in disgust when she realized that she was talking to herself.
She took off from right there in the middle of the lake, water showering down from her body. On the way home it occurred to her that the little Kenshin would probably appreciate lunch, so she snagged a deer for him. Then as she continued on, she remembered that humans did not eat as much as dragons, and he probably had enough left over from breakfast to last him the rest of the day. 'Idiot,' she thought at herself in disgust. Oh well. She would just eat the deer herself and find something else to feed Kenshin tomorrow.
As she approached, she was surprised to find him standing outside the cave, watching her as she made her landing. 'What are you looking at?' she thought, glaring.
He smiled up at her. He was filthy, with dirt still drifting gently down from his hair and clothes. "You looked so beautiful just then," he said admiringly.
She stared at him in shock, then realized he must have meant it sarcastically. 'You JERK!' She slung her tail down, hitting the ground so close to him that he stumbled. 'And I was trying to be nice, too!'
"Is that how you usually take compliments?" he called up accusingly when he had regained his balance. "What's wrong with liking the way you fly?"
She turned her back on him and sulked.
After a minute she heard him sigh. "I'm going to go take a bath now."
'Good. You need it.'
"Stay away from the lake."
'As if I'd want to go peeping at you!'
"Okay?"
'O-kay!' She accompanied this thought with an irritated thump of her tail, and soon she could hear his footsteps moving away. Then she lay her head down on her forelegs and sighed.
o.o.o.o.o
She couldn't enjoy the moonrise as she usually did. Her back prickled as she sensed him behind her, his eyes on her, his presence looming around her despite the diminutive size of his body. Then she heard rustling sounds as he got to his feet and came close to her. "What are we waiting for?" he asked.
She looked down and noticed him tense as their eyes met, but he held her gaze steadily. She sighed and pointed at the sky.
He cocked his head. "Is...er, someone coming?" he asked, unable to completely keep the nervousness out of his voice.
She grinned, but at the sight of her bared teeth he took a hurried step back. It hurt to watch, and her smile disappeared at once. But then, to her astonishment, he walked forward again and actually came all the way up to her, placing a hand on her scales. Her hide was too tough for her to feel his touch, so she had to rely on her eyes to stare at him and reassure herself that she wasn't dreaming. A human had just approached her and reached out to her amicably. She had to blink hard to stop more tears from coming.
"I'm sorry," he said, almost too quietly for her to hear. "I'm afraid you're going to have to be patient with me. I don't know you very well yet."
Completely floored, Kaoru lowered her head so she could stare at him better. 'Are you real?' she thought almost angrily. 'Am I so lonely that I've started hallucinating? I think that's it, I think you're my new imaginary friend. You can't be an angel, because I wasn't struck by lightning when I threw you in the lake.'
"What are you thinking?" he finally wondered.
She chuckled darkly. 'You don't want to know.' She sighed and looked back at the sky.
After a few minutes he asked in a small voice, "Is your mate the same size as you, or bigger?"
'My WHAT?' He thought she was waiting for the return of a mate? Kaoru shook her head violently, thinking of the lustful winged beats that had come after her in the early years, until she had maimed enough of them for the rest to get the point.
"So he's smaller?" Kenshin asked hopefully.
Kaoru would have smacked a hand over her face if such a gesture had not run the risk of poking her eye out with her own claw. Going over to the cave entrance, she began scratching crude pictures in the dirt of two dragons. Apparently Kenshin could see well enough in the glow from her open throat, because she sensed the blood rushing to his face when, remembering the earlier fiasco, she vengefully added a bit of detail on one picture that obviously marked it as a male. This image she then proceeded to claw over and stamp on. Then she looked at Kenshin to see if he understood.
He was staring at her, open-mouthed. "You killed him?"
Kaoru roared up at the sky in exasperation. She noticed that, though he cowered away at first, he recovered himself and looked back at her even before she finished venting. She glared at him.
"Then who are we waiting for, if you haven't been pining for an absent mate all this time?" he asked, sounding almost as frustrated as she felt.
Oh, for crying out loud... She reached to pick him up, but paused when he started to cringe away and then planted his feet with a resolute but unhappy expression. He probably didn't like being man-handled, but was...what, too polite to say so?
Thoughtfully, Kaoru spread out her claws instead, and after a surprised moment he actually stepped into her "palm" and wrapped an arm around her upright "thumb" for balance. Satisfied that this new arrangement was more comfortable for him, Kaoru brought him up and let him clamber onto the top of her head. She felt him sit down hastily when she turned to look at the dark sky again.
Belatedly, she realized that he was now in a prime position to draw his sword and stab her in the eye, but after a few tense minutes she was surprised to hear him begin to sing softly, a little nursery rhyme that she remembered from a long, long time ago. He suddenly stopped and mumbled, "Sorry. Was that bothering you?"
"Eeeeaaah," she growled, shaking her head very slowly so as not to dislodge him.
There was a thoughtful silence from atop her head. Then he asked, his tone oddly testing, "Will you let me stay here a little longer?"
Hadn't they already gone over this? "Haaaa." Nodding was trickier.
She heard him chuckling. 'What?' she thought defensively.
"So you can talk, a little," he said in satisfaction. "Iie. Hai. You got the pronunciation pretty close."
Suddenly angry and embarrassed, she growled vehemently, and he subsided at once. The moon was finally rising, but she looked at it sullenly, all pleasure in the sight gone. After a while she heard Kenshin suddenly gasp, "Ohhhh! We're looking at the moon, right?"
A cool blush crept through her face. She was terrified that he would fall off if she nodded again, so reluctantly she said, "Haaaa."
His voice had a smile in it. "She is very beautiful."
The blush intensified, though Kaoru could not fathom why, since he was referring to the moon.
Later, she tried to make him a crude bed, but he refused her efforts politely and settled down against the wall outside her bedroom again, his sword tucked comfortably in his arms. With his scent in her nose, she lay listening to the comforting sound of his heartbeat and watched him gaze thoughtfully into the darkness long into the night.
To be continued...
Author's Note: Okay, cheesy disclaimer here - NEVER STARE DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN. You are not a dragon, you'll damage your eyes. Hopefully you all knew that already, but I mention it just in case.