Woooo... long absence. Oh well. I just got suddden inspiration. Enjoy!

Warnings: none

Dragon Knight Snippets

The door opened with a slow creak, and Kaistern jumped at the sudden noise.

"Kaistern?"

The Blue Officer smiled tiredly, motioning for the young child with wide crimson eyes to step in. Rath hesitated timidly before running across the room, jumping onto Kaistern to give him as big a hug as his small arms would allow, not hearing the sharp hiss of pain the older man let out.

"I missed you, Kaistern!" he mumbled, burying his face into the thin folds of Kaistern's shirt.

"Me too, kiddo," Kaistern smiled, tousling the kid's hair affectionately.

"You were gone for a long time."

Kaistern laughed, "It was only a week," he paused, "But I guess considering you're only a month old… that would seem like a long time."

Rath's eyes wandered from his face to the ground, and he looked back a Kaistern, his round face troubled, "What's that?"

Kaistern looked to see the bandages he'd just finished changing lying on the floor, bloodstainedand dirty.

"Those are bandages. I didn't feel like getting up to throw them away yet," he was slightly wary, wondering if this was a dangerous topic to thread on, considering Rath had only been 'created' a month ago, and as so, was very new to the world.

"What's that red stuff?" Rath's wide eyes were curious, naïve.

Kaistern hesitated, "Blood."

"What's that?"

"It's a liquid that runs inside your body. You need it to live. If you lose too much, it's bad," he shifted Rath onto a more comfortable position on his lap, so that he wasn't touching his wound. Rath was oblivious.

"…Do I have some?"

"Of course. All living things have blood, well, except for plants…" Kaistern wasn't a scientist, so he wondered if he giving the wrong explanations… oh well. Didn't matter at this point in the kid's life.

"Why did it come out?"

Kaistern rubbed his eyes tiredly, "Well, blood comes out when you get hurt," he realized that probably wasn't a very good thing to say, as Rath might get scared when he got his first bruise or scrape, which Kaistern was surprised he hadn't yet, seeing how daring adventurous a kid he was, "Like here," he took off a band-aid on his finger, where he'd gotten a small paper cut a couple days ago. There was only a thin scab left, "See? Just cause it bleeds doesn't mean it's serious. But you should always see Cernozura or someone if you get hurt."

Rath sat still for a long time, his gaze alternating between Kaistern and the bloody bandages on the floor. He then raised his arm, poking it gently, and then again and again, increasingly harder every time.

"It takes a bit more than that to make you bleed," Kaistern said amusedly.

Rath stopped and looked up, "So is bleeding bad?"

"Well… yes, because it means you're hurt. But like I said, it doesn't mean that anything serious has happened.

Rath seemed to understand his words, but not really understand. It was of course something he'd have to experience for himself, falling and scraping his knee or something similar, to really understand. For the moment, Kaistern wasn't sure if he'd even done correctly by saying all that he had, but Kaistern didn't really believe in lying to protect a kid.

"I heard the Alfeegi and Tetheus talking," Rath spoke up after a period of silence, "Alfeegi asked how you were, and Ruwalk said you had a nice gash. What's that mean

Here, Kaistern hesitated. He figured though, that this would happen often enough that there was no point in shielding Rath from the fact that people got hurt. He didn't need to see Kaistern's wound, it really wasn't very pretty, but Kaistern didn't feel it was right to lie. Besides, what was he supposed to say?

"Well, Ruwalk didn't mean nice as in good but nice as in…" well, why confuse the kid on the uses of the word 'nice', especially since here it meant a pretty big gash, "It means I got hurt. Along here," Kaistern motioned a small part of the length of the gash that ran across his chest, "It's not that bad, though, so you don't need to worry about it."

Rath's wide innocent eyes blinked a couple times, and then he reached a small white hand up to touch his chest. Kaistern waited for possible painful experimentation on Rath's part, but the touch was very tender, barely tangible.

"Does it hurt?"

Kaistern grinned, "Only when I breathe," Rath's eyes widened, and Kaistern laughed lightly, "Just kidding. No, it's not that bad."

"How did you get hurt?"

Now this was a subject Kaistern wanted to avoid. Rath did not need to know about war, or greed, or assassination plots against traveling politicians. Rath didn't need to know that there were bad people out there who wanted to hurt others. He would eventually find out, everyone did, but he was only a month old. And with Rath, death and the dark side of people's… or a creature's… hearts was a tricky matter that none of them, not even sensible Lykouleon, were sure how to breach with Rath. They weren't sure of possible reactions from his demon side, deeply locked as it was. There were some things that a child did not need to be shielded from, but there were some things that had a right place and a right time, and this was not it for this particular subject.

"It was an accident. I fell off the carriage."

"Oh," Kaistern wasn't sure if Rath had bought the excuse. On the surface it seemed like he did, but there was something in the back of Kaistern's mind that did not agree with that assumption. Rath was a strange kid, they figured it had to do with his demon side, whose intuition was often far beyond that of a child's.

The door opened for the second time since Kaistern had gotten home, and this time Tetheus' tall, dark figure stepped into the room. His scarlet eyes caught sight of Rath and he raised his eyebrows, glancing at Kaistern.

"You've barely been here an hour and he already came to see you," Tetheus seemed amused by this, but stopped as he took in Kaistern's obvious exhaustion.

"Hi Tetheus!"

"Rath, come with me. Let's leave Kaistern to take a nap, he's tired from his trip," the Black Officer said in what Kaistern thought was a very motherly tone.

Rath looked at Kaistern, "Are you sleepy? It's only the middle of the day!"

Kaistern smiled apologetically, "Yeah, but it's been a long trip. This old man needs a nap."

Rath seemed puzzled, but Tetheus took a hold of his hand, stopping any more questions, and ushered him out the door. He turned to the Blue Officer before closing the door.

"You might want to get rid of those," he pointed at the bandages, and Kaistern grinned sheepishly, "I'll see you tomorrow when you wake up, we want to know what happened."

Kaistern yawned widely, wincing slightly afterwards, and nodded, "Sure thing, see ya."

There was an audible "Bye Kaistern!" from the other side of the door, and Tetheus smiled slightly, then the door closed.

:Shrug: I remember thinking of this snippet a while ago, but yesterday I just decided to write it up. Hope it was... interesting at least. I figure you probably expected something a lot more dramatic cause of the summary, but I thought this would be more of a slice-of-life type snippet than a huge drama thing. I wanted to play with a young naive Rath a bit more.