My friend wanted a Dragon!AU and since I was blocked halfway though part three of the Vampire!AU I decided that a small break was called for. Unfortunately I won't be able to finish part three this month, but I'll try my best to have it written up by the first week of July. In the meantime, have a kleptomanic dragon Thorne and ever so slightly magical Cress.
All that glitters
"Are you stupid?"
"I'm gonna say no, but I'm sure you'd like to disagree."
"Thorne," the pretty girl with dirt on her face pinches the bride of her nose, looking like she wants to hurt someone. "You stole a person."
"You can't prove that," Cress watches her kidnapper fold his arms defensively.
"She's sitting right here, you idiot" the girl says with a pointed jab in Cress' direction.
Thorne smoothly slides up in front of her, blocking her from the pretty girl's line of sight. "Where?" he feigns.
"Oh my stars!" While the girl starts up with her exasperated chiding, Cress takes the time to tap a, low attractive tune on the side of her chair, letting a little magic slip into the room, gauging it, collecting all sorts of information like the presence of something half-alive in the next room, and a jar of metal fingers on a shelf full of silicone hearts. She studies the girl and her kidnapper too. Her magic flutters about them, almost close enough to touch.
The girl is not all there, she senses, and her kidnapper has fire in his lungs.
"Why? Why. Why would you do this?" the girl asks. "What made you think that this was even remotely okay?"
Thorne takes his time, then mumbles something too soft to hear. The girl narrows her eyes and punches him in the arm.
"I didn't get that," she says.
"Hair," Thorne repeats, a touch louder this time. "It's her hair. It's all shiny and golden."
The pretty girl explodes into another tirade. Cress taps three times, and hums a soft, soft tune to release a stronger probing spell. There are mostly cold things here, things that were never alive, but someday will be attached to someone or something that breathes. There are papers, and grease, and clothes somewhere. There is diligence and love in this place. There was laughter here recently too.
"I found her in a tower, you know," Thorne says, trying to defend himself. "Locked up. She's probably ecstatic to be out and if you think about it, I actually did her a favour."
"You don't know that. She might not have wanted to leave."
"Of course she did!"
"Did you ask her?"
Throne rolls his eyes. "Well, of course. But as you might have noticed, she isn't talking. Won't even tell me her name. All she does is…squeak."
Cress squirms under the pretty girl's calculative stare.
"She could be a criminal." The girl says.
That brings on a pause. Thorne turns around to look at Cress, then back at the girl who presses her lips together, then sighs.
"Okay, maybe not."
Cress indeed hasn't spoken since she left the tower. It's not because she doesn't want to. It's just…she's never spoken to another person other than Mistress Sybil before. She'd never even seen one. She doesn't know what to say, especially to someone so beautiful as Thorne. (What if she makes a fool of herself?)
He was all dappled shades of brown and blue when he crashed into her prison.
(All claws and wings and fire.)
He was beautiful then, as he is now in smooth skin and soft hair. Well, Cress imagines it's soft. It looks soft. She hasn't touched it (yet) so she can only guess by sight. He had lain in the cracked floor amid the rubble and dust for long minutes after his crash. Then slowly, oh so slowly, he'd turned into this wingless, delicate form.
Aces, was the first thing he'd said to her.
She'd wanted to touch him then, but instead she'd made an unattractive noise and hidden behind a toppled over reading table.
Her spell pinches her as it finds something interesting—drops of electricity and moonlight in the pretty girl's blood. Cress sucks in a sharp breath as she realizes who this girl with the missing spaces is.
Oh, oh, oh. No.
She should go to Mistress Sybil with this information. She should go back to her prison and report her findings to the person she owes her life to. She should…she should…
She feels lightheaded and dizzy and sick. She can already feel the walls of the tower closing in around her, feel its cold, dry embrace even as she sits in a wide sunlit room.
A warm hand finds hers and gentle fingers coax themselves around her. Thorne's hair looks even softer this close. Everything about him looks soft, even his worry.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
He's so, so beautiful. And so kind, she can tell now. And really, he's hardly a kidnapper, but rather a heroic rescuer if she thinks about it. He's also very beautiful.
"Would you like some water?" the pretty girl asks. "We'll take you back home, okay?"
"If you want to go back," Thorne adds hastily and the girl narrows her eyes.
If they go back, Cress could hand the pretty girl over in person. That would undoubtedly bring some sort of reward at least. Mistress would like that very much. She might even forget about Cress leaving her tower. She would go back to her cold, stone walls and velvet curtains. Or, if Mistress allows it, she might even be set free. The pretty girl is very, very important.
(But the hand on hers is so warm.)
Cress makes a decision.
"No," she tells Thorne.
She will not go back. She doesn't want to go back.
She wants to breathe in the rain and dust. She wants walk on sand. She wants to feel the sunlight on her skin, and wind in her hair. She wants to know affection, and jealously, and heartache, and love. She wants to know how pineapples grow.
(She wants to wrap a blue-eyed boy in her arms until her heart explodes.)
She twists her hair around her wrist and watches Thorne follow the movement with his eyes. Locks and stone are not for her anymore. She will not be shacked to her tower. She will run, and scream, tumble, and seize everything this world has to offer her.
It's a scary thought. It's terrifying. But it's something she has to do. She'd missed so much already.
She's never going back.
(Besides, her room would have been too small to keep a dragon, and Mistress Sybil didn't allow her pets.)