CAUTION: Spoils aspects of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, as well as aspects of When Nothing Remains, and much of Usurpation of the Darkness through chapter 13.
Seriously, major spoilers here.
Assuming you wish to continue, read on…
Background: You know why we're here by now, I think. Time for part three of Gold's little mini-saga, and it's a long one.
"Well, well, well, look, who has come crawling back."
"Crawling?" Gold smirked. "I think strutting is a better word for someone who has gone up in the world and knows it. Besides, we are both flying." He knew better than to take Cedar's taunt seriously; that was just how Cedar acted when he was jealous.
"If you have come to brag, get it over with," Cedar said seriously. "Ash will just get bogged down in simple things, and I do not want to embarrass any of the girls. How is she?"
Gold shook his head ruefully. "How crude of you. As a mated male, I am disgusted you would ask me such a vulgar question about my mate." He was joking now, but hopefully Cedar would drop it, because he had as good as promised Lily not to brag or give details about that. Given what she had held up as the consequence for doing so, he was not going to tempt fate by saying anything too explicit.
"As a shameless chaser of females whose friend and fellow chaser has finally caught one, I say you had better spill it before the girls meet up with us," Cedar insisted. "Come on, was she any good? Did she purr afterward? Is it true that females like to-"
"It was great, and that is all I am saying," Gold said firmly. "I would feel bad about betraying her trust."
"Yeah, pull the other one," Cedar snickered. "Come on, is my agony funny to you? Give me details!"
"Maybe I do find your suffering funny," Gold shot back. "We both know you have to build trust before you can break it, and she is very observant. I do not feel like risking her annoyance for you, of all people." Usually he and Cedar got along pretty well, but something about Cedar today was annoying him.
Cedar flung his wings forward, slowed down dramatically, and lunged at Gold's tail. Gold dove forward to avoid it out of reflex, all too familiar with Cedar's first resort when annoyed.
"Details, I am begging you," Cedar repeated desperately. "I have to wait at least another season-cycle, maybe more, and Lily is so sleek. Let me live through you at least."
Gold spotted several white shapes rising to meet them, and dove to close the gap even further, wanting to shut Cedar up. "I already told you all you get to know."
"So, I should take it she is terrible, a total letdown you cannot bear to speak of?" Cedar called out from behind him.
"No, you should take it that she is so good I do not want to make her mad for your sake and risk being given the cold shoulder," Gold retorted. "I care more for my own pleasure than yours." At this point, he wasn't going to give in, just to spite his friend; Cedar should know he was capable of sticking to a resolution once making it.
"So much for your talk of not being cowed by your mate," Cedar chortled. "It sounds like she has you by the second tail."
"At least mine is a second tail, not a stubby extra frill," Gold shot back, banking around to fly in formation with the other five light wings of Cedar's season-cycle, those who would be making the transition from fledgling to adult at the next ceremony.
"Are you two comparing lengths again?" Danda, one of the three females, asked, huffing as if offended by the very idea.
"Maybe," Cedar admitted, falling in opposite Gold. "Want to help us settle it by measuring? Liona? Mist? Any takers?"
The three females all cast Cedar near-identical looks of disgust. Mist spoke for the three of them. "Not on your life."
"Besides," Root, one of the males, was quick to add, "Gold's mate would not like that."
"Gold has a mate?" Ash, the other male, asked curiously. It was possible he just hadn't heard the news yet, though it had been five days, but Gold was pretty sure he had forgotten. He wasn't the sharpest claw on the paw, to put it mildly.
"Yeah, Lily," Root supplied helpfully. "What made you pick her, Gold? Did your Dam say she was the best?"
"Not all of us let our Dams decide things for us," Gold said scornfully. "She had nothing to do with my choice. I just decided that Lily was the best of the three." He didn't know if Crystal had spread word of her newfound disgust for him around, but if she hadn't he certainly wasn't going to make it known. He looked better if it was him deciding she wasn't the optimal choice, not her dumping him and making it an easy decision.
"Oh, so that is why Honey has moved off of her parents' rock," Ash exclaimed. "And Crystal, too. Did they pick mates?"
"Ash, please tell me you did not forget how this works," Mist groaned. "They both went to Claw."
"Lucky him," Cedar murmured enviously.
"So, Gold," Liona ventured timidly. "If you and Lily are mates, why is she not here with you now?"
"We do not do everything together," Gold said dismissively. "We agreed to go do our own things today and meet up tonight, and that was that." He didn't really know what Lily meant to do with the day, but as long as she remained faithful, which really wasn't in question, it didn't matter to him. He just liked that neither of them had needed to explain what they intended to do to the other. That felt like neither of them controlling the other, and he liked that feeling.
"And Lily has never really hung out with us like you or Crystal," Mist mused thoughtfully, "so she would not really want to be here anyway."
"That reminds me, Crystal said she would be meeting up with us at noon," Root offered. "So, we should circle back over the valley then."
"She can find us if she feels like it," Gold countered, not entirely happy with the prospect of being around Crystal so soon after she had spurned him, even if it was in a group setting. It wouldn't be easy to avoid her with the close, banter-prone nature of the people around him; he couldn't exactly make the excuse of holding a private conversation with someone else.
"What is our flight plan for today?" Danda asked, setting off an argument over whether they should fly out over the forest or the ocean. Whether they would be flying at all wasn't in question, that was what this particular group met up to do, as flying was the one thing they all held as a common interest aside from being close in age, but where to go was just as hotly-contested as always. Gold ignored the good-natured bickering, but it was a comforting piece of normality.
As they argued, the group passed over the mountains, and Gold happened to look down. A purple flash had caught his eye, a reflection he was coming to associate with one light wing in particular. What was Lily doing up on the mountaintop?
He was too far up in the air to actually tell; she seemed to be alone, pacing along a narrow shelf of rock. That was all he could make out, and then they passed over the peak and she was no longer in sight anyway.
He would have to ask tonight, if only to sate his curiosity. There wasn't anything of interest up there, as far as he knew, but he had been wrong before, and Lily didn't strike him as the kind of person to wander without purpose.
O-O-O-O-O
Gold could tell Lily was upset, or had been upset recently, the moment she started speaking. Her voice was scratchy and breathless, though outwardly she appeared fine. Her words were also completely innocent, though, and she didn't volunteer an explanation immediately.
"I spent the day with Cedar, Ash, and the rest of their season-cycle," Gold said casually in response to a polite question, and wrapped his tail around hers as he settled down beside her on their rock. "Crystal was supposed to show up, but she never did. Aside from that, nothing very interesting happened. How about you?"
"I saw Crystal, but I don't know why she wouldn't show up," Lily admitted. "And I met with some other people I had not talked to in a while. That was my day, and probably even more boring than yours. Have you eaten recently, or should we go for a late meal?"
"I have eaten," and in fact he had eaten too much thanks to an ill-advised competition, though she didn't need to know that, "but you are hiding something. Why are you upset?"
"I'm not, though," Lily said, sounding entirely innocent. Her eyes were wide and open, as if she had been shocked by his accusation. "I'm really not."
"Not now, maybe," he persisted, sure he was right. She was surprisingly hard to read when she wanted to be, so catching any clear signs at all either meant he had caught her off-guard… Or she was playing him, a possibility he couldn't dismiss out of paw.
"Not now…" Lily shrugged her wing shoulders uncomfortably. "Fine. One of the conversations I had today was not pleasant, to say the least, but that was my fault and everything is fine now."
"Someone was-" Gold began, feeling offended, only to be cut off almost immediately.
"I was only suffering the consequences of my own actions," Lily said firmly. "I deserved it. Now please, stop asking about it. It's over and I want to move on."
"I at least want to know who," Gold bargained. He wanted to know who to glare at and possibly intimidate next time he saw them. Lily was his mate, and nobody was allowed to hurt her or roar at her, even if she did think she deserved it.
"You wouldn't know them," Lily said confidently.
"How do you know? I know a lot of people." He tightened his tail around hers for a moment, being careful not to send the wrong message by squeezing so tightly as to hurt. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was trying to physically force answers out of her. Knowing her, she would find some way to respond in kind, but worse. "I want to know who to growl at."
"No, I want the two of you to get along," Lily said tentatively. "How about I bring you to talk to them in a few days? I promised to anyway."
"Is this some scorned family member you forgot to tell about us?" Gold asked skeptically. He really didn't feel like doing the polite pleasantries again; that was the sort of thing one was only supposed to have to do once. He had been enjoying not having to see his parents every day. Meeting with yet another relative felt like losing that independence.
"Yes, but not really," Lily explained cryptically. "That was not what he was mad about, anyway. He is eager to meet you."
"He? And eager to meet me specifically?" He was almost certain she wasn't speaking of Claw, because there would be no reason to hide his name so thoroughly, and she had said he didn't know this light wing, whereas everyone knew Claw. But Lily didn't have any other male relatives; of that, he was also certain.
"Like I said, in a few days. Just keep this quiet, okay?" She requested that in a way that did not really feel like she was offering him much of a choice.
"I can wait," he agreed. "Now… Want to go to the ledge?" Their experiment with clandestine mating out in the open had gone well enough, at least in his opinion, but there was no rain to obscure them tonight, the sky clear and cold.
"Not tonight," Lily said with a laughing purr. "I want the both of us well-rested for tomorrow morning. I have something planned."
"Okay." He was more than happy to let plans of that nature remain secret, and extremely pleased that she was still as enthusiastic as him when it came to mating, having not once outright rejected a good opportunity. He attributed that to his talent and to the safe lack of consequences she somehow enjoyed.
Gold closed his eyes and snuggled closer to his mate, happy that all seemed to be more or less right with the world.
O-O-O-O-O
"Flying?" Gold asked disbelievingly. "You woke me up before dawn to go flying?"
Lily pawed at his wing shoulders, pushing this way and that and rocking him from side to side. "Yes, I did, now come on. You were energetic enough just a few moments ago."
"That was because of how you woke me," Gold grumbled. He was a late sleeper, and the only thing that could make him happy about getting up early was what he had thought she meant by wanting him to be well-rested. She could have said they were just going to go flying before dawn; he would have done his best to sleep through her licking and biting at his frills. Now not only was he awake, he was crestfallen.
"I'm not going to let up," Lily threatened, pushing down on his left shoulder. "Move your rear or the claws come out."
Gold pushed his hind paws up, shook his hindquarters at her, and then let them fall to the ground once more. "Rear moved. Now let me go back to sleep." He could have wheedled for a quick mating session in return for doing as she asked, but sleep was looking like the more attractive option for once in his life.
Lily choked back a laughing rumble in favor of a strained growl and continued to knead at his shoulders. "Funny," she admitted, "but not as funny as me rolling you off of this rock and into the mud would be. You'd have trouble going back to sleep then."
Gold shuddered in spite of himself; he knew she didn't make idle threats, and that sounded miserable. He would have to get up, shake himself, either laboriously wash himself off at the pond or take a freezing dip in the ocean, and by the time he was done with all of that there would be no chance of sleeping in anyway…
"Can we fly and then come back here to sleep more?" he asked hopefully. Maybe she just wanted a quick lap around the valley.
"I do not have just flying in mind," Lily purred sultrily. "Follow along and do what I do, and we will end our little excursion at the ledge. Deal? You only have to match me."
"To match you?" It might be his groggy mind getting in the way of itself, but he wasn't sure why she had put it like that. Regardless, it sounded like a great deal if he wasn't going to be allowed to sleep late anyway. "Fine."
"Good," Lily purred, still rubbing his shoulders. "Now come on, let's get out of here before the sun rises."
O-O-O-O-O
Up in the air, cutting through the biting cold on stiff wings, Gold regretting his decision to give in. He flapped harder, trying to work some warmth into the extremities of his wings. His shoulders felt good, great even, but the rest of him needed to be worked a bit before he could be at all comfortable doing anything but lying still.
"We should figure out a better way to sleep," Lily suggested, flying above and to the right of him, her eyes reflecting the just barely rising sun on the horizon. "I'm sore, and I think it's because I woke up with my back more curved than my tail, and your paw under my neck. Well, that and not being used to flying in the morning."
Gold nodded in agreement, wondering as he did what she usually did with her mornings. She wasn't a late sleeper as she usually woke him up, but she always waited and let him fish for the both of them, meaning she wasn't spending the morning doing that, like most of the people he knew well enough to know their routine.
His stomach contracted painfully at the thought of fish, and he veered toward the ocean without even thinking about it. He was hungry, so he was going to eat. Then maybe sleep some more…
"No, we're not going that way yet," Lily called out, dropping in front of him and turning away from the dark waters he was aiming for, headed out toward the endless forest. "We can go for fish after everything else."
"You want me to fly and mate on an empty stomach?" Gold complained.
"No more empty than my own, and yes," Lily retorted. "I'm told that we can go days without food if needed, and I'm also told that given how much I eat, I should be exercising a lot more."
"Who told you that?" Gold asked plaintively. "I want to bite them." He knew he could just fly away from her and fill his stomach regardless, but he was sure she would withhold the promised reward if he did. They were equals in that she didn't order him around, but she…
He realized, in that moment, hungry and yet turning away from the waters that promised food, flying after his mate at dawn when he would rather be asleep, all for the promise of mating later, that Cedar had been right. She did have him by the second tail, so to speak, and she was leading him wherever she wanted with that advantage.
The worst part was that he knew he didn't have the same hold over her. If he threatened to withhold mating, she wouldn't be all that bothered, and would probably be mad at him for trying to control her. She never withheld it, she just offered it as a reward, and he couldn't do the same because they both knew he would jump at the chance to give that same reward whenever she wanted.
"Speed up, match me," Lily called back, flying faster now. "Come on, there is no way I can fly better than you!"
Gold was broken out of his self-pitying thoughts by that taunt. He noticed that the sun was more than halfway above the horizon, that they were out over the forest, and that Lily was getting away.
Not happening! He was stronger and faster than her, and it wasn't just his pride saying that. He powered forward, flinging himself into every wingbeat, and shot past her with ease, though he was panting by the end of it.
"Too fast," Lily roared from behind him. "Match me!"
She kept saying that, and he still didn't understand it. This was a race, wasn't it? He had won. That was all there was to it.
Still, he wanted to bask in his victory, so he slowed down to let her catch up. "I won," he crowed. "Bet you have never gone that fast."
"Never," she readily agreed. "I'm not much for flying. Apparently, that's part of the problem."
"What problem?" He didn't mind beating her in races, but mention of a problem set him on edge, because so far he didn't tend to like her way of solving things.
"I'm out of shape," she said bluntly, breathing heavily as they flew.
"You are not," he protested, feeling compelled to correct that inaccuracy. She was slim, not overweight; if anything, she could do with more fat to round out some places. "You are thin."
"I said out of shape, not overweight," she corrected, still breathing heavily. They hadn't slowed down; this was somewhere close to her top speed, as far as he knew. "Can't fly very fast for very long… Can't run for long without having to stop… Less energy than I should have, tired quicker overall, just less efficient… That's what I was told."
"Who is telling you all of this?" Gold demanded. He wanted to claw at and bite whoever was making Lily feel she had to drag them away from home in the early morning to fly and not eat, and he wanted to really hurt them for disparaging his mate. Not only was she a reflection on him, she clearly didn't like what had been said about her, and it was his responsibility to protect her from cruel words as surely as physical attacks.
"The same person who told me how to fix all of it, in detail," Lily panted. "So, we're flying today, and we're running tomorrow, and the day after we're wrestling. All in the morning, all for as long as we can manage without collapsing."
"Wrestling?" Gold asked, intrigued. He liked the sound of that.
"Yes, wrestling," Lily huffed. "That's for strength. Flying for wings and stamina, running for legs and stamina. There… might be more, but we're… starting with those." She was clearly running out of energy, huffing faster and faster and struggling to speak, but she didn't slow down, keeping to the punishing pace that Gold was feeling in his wings now, though he felt he could keep going for a long while yet with no issues.
"You really are quick to tire," he observed.
"Yes…" She abruptly flung her wings open and slowed dramatically, dropping into a glide with the air of one who simply could not do any more… Which might be close to the truth.
"That was awful," she groaned through gritted teeth once he had circled back around and fallen back in with her at her new, leisurely pace. She was still panting, though through her nose now, which was an improvement.
"Are we done here?" Gold asked hopefully.
"No," she gritted. "Five times, he said, so I'll do ten. I won't quit."
"Ten of those?!" He looked her over. "You would not even last five." He didn't know if he could do ten times the length they had spent at that speed just now; even he had limits.
"We will see," Lily shot back.
"Why is this so important?" Gold asked, hoping that a trick stolen from her, questioning the underlying reasons for doing something, would still work on her. It certainly worked on him.
"It… just… is… "
Well, he wasn't going to get a more eloquent answer than that if she could barely breathe. He dropped that line of questioning, at least for the moment, and set himself to thinking about what he was supposed to do with this.
Not exploit it; he didn't know how he would, and he wasn't supposed to be trying to control her anymore. That was no fun, not when it would just turn personal when she struck back with something worse and more effective, and he liked the truce they had settled into. She was starting to relax around him, and he her, more so than ever before. This was how things were supposed to be.
Almost, anyway. He needed to figure out how to break her hold on him when it came to mating, because she was using it to inconvenience him, but other than that, he liked how things were now.
Lily sped up once more, still panting even as she pushed herself, and Gold found himself following at a similar pace, feeling uneasy. He didn't like pushing himself as a general rule, and she clearly didn't either, but she was doing it anyway, all for somebody he didn't even know the name of.
He didn't know much about this person yet, but he knew he didn't like them. She was his mate, and she barely listened to him sometimes. Why was she so worked up over what some other dragon told her?
He stewed over that fact for a while, mentally counting as Lily slowed down then sped up another four times, each grueling iteration shorter than the last. He was beginning to feel it too, but nowhere near as badly as she clearly was.
At five repetitions, she hesitated longer than before, but soon she was starting her sixth. That was where it all went wrong.
Gold was, as luck would have it, flying beneath her at the time. He liked looking at the sky, and he liked looking at Lily's underside framed by the sky even more. He was bored, and she was a good distraction.
So, he was looking right at her when she failed to pull her wings all the way up after yet another powerful push downward to maintain speed. She tried, and then once she couldn't do it she tried to just spread her wings and hold them out, but they crumpled entirely when she did that.
And then she was falling.
Gold almost didn't react in time; he only barely realized what was happening in time to lurch forward and snag her tail with his paws, and she was far too heavy for him to lift.
In heartbeats, they had gone from flying above the forest separately to falling toward it together. Lily's tail jerked and pulled at his legs, throwing him off-balance even as he struggled to get enough power beneath his frantic wingbeats to slow their freefall into something survivable, and he dipped to one side, veering off toward the ocean.
He didn't have time to panic, which was good, because that was the worst possible development. They might be hurt crashing through the trees, but they would definitely drown if they hit the water too far out.
They passed over the shore, and Lily jerked down on his paws once more, yanking her tail from his grasp entirely. He roared something incoherent as her weight disappeared, but he instinctively spread his wings to stop his own plummet, now that he was capable of doing so, without even thinking about it.
A heartbeat later, he realized what he had done and folded his wings in entirely, hoping to reach her and grab her again, but he was too late, and even as he dove she splashed into the water near the shore.
Near the shore. He leveled out just short of crashing himself, shoved his tail to the side and forced a tight turnaround, and skimmed the surf as he frantically looked for her.
There was still no time for conscious thought; he didn't have time to worry about what it would mean for him if she was dead, or how he would explain it, or how he would find a new mate afterward. None of that went through his head as he desperately hoped for her to surface, to be alive, to survive. None of that mattered.
Then her white head broke the water, far closer to the shore than he had anticipated, and he roared in relief as he skimmed past her, landing clumsily in the sand in his haste to be out there helping her.
Lily, for her part, didn't seem to need his help; by the time he had recovered from his crash landing and turned to run out into the shallows, she was collapsing just above the tide line, her entire body quaking with exertion, water running off of her, strands of water plants tangled in her frills and around her tail. She lay on her side and looked to his eyes like a corpse might look after being washed up by a storm.
But her chest was heaving, her eyes were open, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air. She was alive.
He ran to her and crouched by her head, looking into her wide grey eye. Asking 'are you okay' would be the height of stupidity, and he was starting to slow down and think now that the danger had passed, so he didn't say anything while she slowly calmed down.
A long time after her breathing had returned to something akin to normal, she closed her eyes and groaned.
"Is anything broken?" Gold found himself asking. At least it was a more practical question than the first one that had come to mind.
"No idea." Lily feebly flexed each paw, kicking in the air. "Not my legs. Not my head. Not my chest." Her tail slapped against the sand. "Sore tail, not broken though. Wings…"
Gold held his breath as she laboriously rolled onto her stomach and spread her wings. They quaked dramatically, to a point where if she had not just fallen out of the sky he would think she was faking it.
"Wings feel like water," she moaned, letting them fall limp on the sand to either side of her, "but they felt like that before I fell. Nothing broken."
"Good," he said, leaning in and resting his chin on her forehead. She smelled salty and disgusting, but he did it anyway. "Are you going to get up?"
"No," she replied. "I'm just going to lay here a while longer."
He didn't question that decision. "Then I am going to go get fish, if we will be here much longer." He felt like blasting the ocean with his strongest bolts of fire anyway, just to relieve the pent-up tension making him jittery. Getting the food his stomach still demanded would just be a good excuse.
O-O-O-O-O
By the time he returned, Lily had walked all of five paces to a small hill of sand and managed to bury herself up to her haunches, for some reason. Her eyes were closed, but she opened them once the smell of fresh fish hit her.
He purred a little at that; approaching from upwind of her had been a smart idea. "Here," he offered, dropping one just shy of her face. The rest were for her too, as he had eaten as he fished, but he felt like doling them out one by one, if only to get her talking.
"Thank you," she murmured, taking the fish and swallowing it whole. "For everything."
He knew she meant him grabbing her and probably saving her life over the forest, and under different circumstances he might have been miffed that she thought a simple thank you was enough to pay him back. But thinking that of his mate, who had just almost died, just felt childish.
"It is really just a good thing I was there," he said, not even thinking about the fact that he had just approved of the very thing he had been resenting all morning, her getting him up early to go with her. All of that petty resentment felt distant, worthless in the face of what might have happened had she not bothered to bring him along. What was some discomfort against possibly losing his mate?
"Pyre told me to always bring a spotter, just in case," Lily mumbled around another mouthful of fish.
Pyre? That was a name, which meant he now knew exactly who had put her up to this. The only problem was that he didn't know anyone named Pyre. There weren't that many light wings in the valley, and he knew most of them, but not this one.
"This Pyre person also almost got you killed," Gold growled, working through that thought and its ramifications even as he spoke. "He told you to push yourself, and you did, and if I had not been there you would have died. This is his fault."
Lily shook her head wildly at that. "No, not at all! He told me to do five of those, and I did more. I only fell on the sixth one. If I had just stuck to what he said, I would have been fine."
Gold did, however reluctantly, remember something to that effect. "Well," he growled, "that was a really stupid thing to do then, I think." He still didn't like Pyre, whoever he was, and was going to have some choice words for him when Lily introduced them. Pyre had put her up to this, and now she had almost died. It was still his doing, if not entirely his fault.
Lily let her head fall to the sand she was partially buried in, and sighed loudly. "Yes, it was stupid. I know. But I couldn't exactly tell where my limits were if it all felt horrible, so how would I have known? I felt like I was going to collapse after the second one, even though I didn't."
"So you should not have been doing it at all," Gold retorted. "This is not necessary."
"It is, and I have been meaning to start improving myself long before now, but I always put it off," Lily huffed. "And you, but we are supposed to be equals and we both need to work on things, so I thought we could do it together, and that way it would be fair."
"And it almost got you killed," he repeated.
"Trying to do more than I was supposed to almost got me killed," Lily repeated stubbornly. "Besides, I know my limits now, and how else am I supposed to be safer aside from working on it?"
"I hate that you never do things without a reason," Gold grumbled, lying down in front of her. "That makes it so hard to change your mind about anything." He also hated that she always seemed to be right; he couldn't think of a retort to that which didn't boil down to 'so just don't fly', which was not an answer to anything.
"Sorry, not sorry," she whispered. "Gold?"
"Yes?"
"My wings feel terrible," she admitted. "I really overdid it. I think I will have to walk back."
Gold looked over at the treeline, and at the distant mountains, and estimated how long that would take. He didn't like what he came up with. "That will take you until past dark!"
"I know," she groaned. "But I do not think flying is a smart move. I will have to start soon."
"I guess I will walk with you," he sighed. That promised to be extremely boring, but what else could he do? Fly back to the valley and pretend to his friends that he had not left his mate to walk all day? Even if he could do that, it would give her yet another event to hold over his head if she ever needed to, and it would mean he couldn't talk about his heroic actions in saving her. He definitely wanted to brag about that once he didn't feel a surge of panic from just remembering those frantic moments.
"You will?" Lily asked, her voice low and considering. "Thank you. Really. You don't have to, but if you want to, I certainly am not going to complain."
Gold purred loudly at the surprise and gratitude in her voice; for once, he felt like he had gotten the best of the situation, even if they were not striving to control each other any longer. He had gone along, saved her life, brought her food, and now was going to walk her back like a polite, helpful mate, and he didn't in the slightest feel like his Sire bowing to his Dam. She needed his help, and she was asking or hoping for it, not demanding it. That made all the difference.
O-O-O-O-O
They did not talk all that much on the walk back, though it did indeed take the rest of the day and much of the night. By the time they had reached the foot of the mountain, finally clear of the forest, the moon was shining brightly down on them.
Gold spread his wings and shook them; he wasn't used to not using them for most of a day. "Looks like it is time to fly."
"My wings still feel boneless," Lily reminded him. "There's a path up and down the other side. We can walk the rest of the way, too."
"Flying would be quicker." He remembered something from that morning. "Maybe if I press my paws on your wing shoulders? That helped me loosen up when you did it." He was tired and ready to go to sleep, and Lily surely had to be even more so. If they flew, they would be there in moments.
"Every part of my wing, not just the shoulders," Lily said apologetically. "I don't think it's the same thing. But thank you for offering. Can we just walk quickly?"
"Sure," he acceded, not seeing any point in pushing it. She wasn't a whiner, as the day's events had proven, so if she said she couldn't do it, she really couldn't. If this had been Honey, for instance, he wouldn't believe her when she said she really couldn't fly after that long walk, but Lily was another matter entirely.
The path Lily led him to was well hidden, but what surprised him most was that it seemed intentional. He had expected a daunting climb up sloped rocks and plenty of jumps, not a sloping incline that doubled back on itself but never faltered, at some points clearly cut into the rocks.
How had he never noticed this? He prided himself on having ferreted out every little hiding place mating might be done in, and had thought he knew them all, but several of the deeper cuts in the stone of the mountainside he was currently walking through would serve perfectly as a clandestine meeting point. It wasn't like this path was in use; nobody walked up and down a mountain when they could fly the same path and be done in a hundredth of the time.
Or was it? Lily stopped short and blocked the way, looking back at him with weary eyes. "Go quietly for the next bit," she advised. "Someone lives up here, and he's probably asleep. I really don't want to wake him and have to explain all of this."
"Pyre?" It was simple to connect the tracks; there was a male he didn't know somewhere within reach, and there was a mystery dragon he didn't know sleeping up here.
She nodded significantly. "I'll bring you up to meet him tomorrow, just please don't wake him now."
If he hadn't been tired, he might have wanted to defy her on that point, to make noise and bring this mystery dragon out, but it was late and he just wanted to be home. It could wait.
So, when they passed a nice ledge and an obvious cavern, and he smelled the telltale scent of a male's territory, the smell that was usually reserved for the rocks down in the valley, he held his tongue and just kept going.
Besides, he had something else to think on. That scent had definitely carried a telltale similarity to that of his mate; Pyre really was related to her in some way. Was it possible he was her true Sire, and her Dam unfaithful to Claw?
No, definitely not. He caught up to Lily once they had reached the floor of the valley and inhaled, deeply taking in her scent. He could smell Claw, and while he didn't know Lily's Dam's scent well enough to positively identify it, that was enough to rule out his theory.
Then they were within sight of their rock, and he let all other thoughts out of his mind, leaving it all for another time. It was times like this he was glad he no longer lived with his parents; his Dam would never believe their reason for being out late. He wouldn't have believed it himself.
O-O-O-O-O
The next morning, he woke to the sound of muffled grunts of pain. Try as he might to ignore it, a little nagging feeling in the back of his mind prodded him into waking up fully to investigate. It was his duty as her mate to care, and he did, he just wished she would sleep as late as him.
"Cramps everywhere," she explained shortly. Her wings were spasming, proving her point. "I think it will go away?"
"Maybe. Should I try rubbing your wing shoulders now?" he offered, feeling bad for her.
"You would do that? Yes, please." She shuffled over to let him get at her back.
He didn't really know what he was doing, so he just tried to press down on whatever part of her back spasmed worst and rub the scales around with the pads of his paw. If her occasional grunts and small moans of relief were any indication, it was working.
The somewhat familiar sounds of her beneath him brought something to mind, or rather a lack of something. They had gone the entire day before this one without mating, thanks to Lily's accident and the long walk back. Had he really forgotten about that?
The actual lack didn't bother him. He could always call in her promise later, once she was more able to enjoy it. The more pressing matter was that he really didn't mind, and for once the evocative sounds and feel of a female beneath him, however innocent the current occupation, was not really tempting him.
He took a long look at her hindquarters and reassured himself that nothing was wrong with his desire; she was still extremely attractive to his eyes. He just didn't feel like this was the time for any of that, no matter how provocative this should be.
This was the key to not letting her lead him around by the second tail, this feeling right here. He certainly didn't want to feel like this all the time, but sometimes was not a problem, and if he could just time those instances with her trying to lead him around, he could convince her it didn't work so well anymore.
Lily groaned especially loudly and stretched beneath his paws, flapping her wings experimentally. "That's good," she decided. "Thank you. I really needed that."
"No problem," Gold purred, pushing off of her and returning to all four paws. "I enjoyed it too."
She cast him an amused look. "I'm sure you did," she drawled. "Do we need to go up to the ledge before we do anything else today?"
He decided to make use of the feeling and surprise her. "Maybe later," he said casually.
"Oh," she replied, as surprised as he had hoped she would be. "So… Do you want to go meet Pyre now?"
He had almost forgotten about that! It was a good thing she had brought it up again. "Yes," he said firmly. "Right now?"
"Before we eat?"
"Right after," he conceded. He wanted to be intimidating, and that was hard to do on an empty stomach.
O-O-O-O-O
Some time later, with a full stomach and a renewed anger at the one who had gotten them into the mess the day before, Gold landed on the ledge Lily had requested he sneak by the night before, following Lily's lead. He was not showing his anger, of course, because she would object as she had before, but he felt it all the same.
"Pyre?" Lily called out politely. "I brought him, like I promised."
A mostly nondescript male with deep red eyes emerged from the darkness of the cave, his steps small and his body screaming submission. He glanced up at Gold once, and then stared down at his paws.
Gold couldn't connect what he was seeing to the anger he felt; how could this dragon convince Lily of anything? He looked old and broken, and the empty wings on his back only magnified that appearance. He was a cripple, obviously unable to fly, and Lily took advice on flying from him?
This wasn't right. Gold shifted his stance almost unconsciously, crouching and preparing for a trick, a surprise of some sort. This couldn't be right; something more was going on. He didn't know how he knew that so instinctively, but he did. As one accustomed to manipulating people, he recognized this as a trick.
"Come on, Pyre, you can at least look at him," Lily said neutrally. "He's not going to hurt you."
"I see him," the male whined, his voice old and frail. "He seems good. Can I go now?"
Gold snuck a quick glance at Lily, but he couldn't determine whether the pity and careful neutrality she was displaying was real or false, just as he couldn't decide whether the decrepit, broken old dragon in front of him was really Pyre.
"Okay," he eventually burst out, unable to stand it, "I know something is going on here. This cannot be Pyre. Take me to the real light wing who you value so highly." That was the weak point in this charade; the way Lily had spoken of him before now and how she reacted to him now didn't match.
Lily stared at him with wide eyes, and then at the male Gold was now certain was not Pyre.
"Well," the male said, his voice suddenly firm and not nearly so weathered, though he did retain the pure age that now added weight to his words, "that certainly is something." He looked up, his posture changed in an instant, and suddenly he was nothing like he had been before. His eyes were strong and full of intent, and they bore into Gold like they could see his every thought.
Gold took a step back, and then another. He had expected another light wing to emerge; that it was all an act shook him to his core, because the one thing he had taken for granted was that the dragon in front of him really was what he seemed to be. Lily's discrepancies had put him on guard, but Pyre's performance had not.
"Do you know how he figured it out, Lily?" Pyre asked indulgently. "I think he gave us a hint in how he said that."
"I was not expecting you to put on the 'old, feeble dragon' act you've clearly been practicing for decades and never showed me," Lily complained. "I think I did pretty well in playing along with no prior warning, but I didn't talk about you like you were that persona before now. Even not giving details, that's enough to put a crack in the façade."
"It was a spur-of-the-moment decision," Pyre agreed amiably. "And you did do very well. Not even a moment of confusion."
Gold had not taken another step back, but only because the end of the ledge lay just behind him. He was, to put it bluntly, intimidated. Lily's competency and sneakiness had been a shock; this was flat-out scary. He was used to being the one to lead others on, not being led on obliviously himself.
"But we are being rude to your mate," Pyre remarked, looking over at Gold. "Sorry for the trick, but I wanted to judge your perceptiveness, and that was the sort of opportunity that only comes along once."
"You did really well," Lily added proudly, walking over to Gold and giving him a small shove toward the rest of the ledge, and by extension toward Pyre. "I didn't expect you to catch on at all."
"So this is Pyre?" Gold asked weakly. "There is not some other light wing hiding in the cavern, ready to jump out once I fall for this?"
"No, this is really him," Lily answered, rumbling in amusement. "Come on, he won't bite."
"Probably not, anyway," Pyre rumbled, stretching and lying on his side. His piercing eyes shifted from Gold to look out over the valley. "Maybe I overdid it."
Gold couldn't help but notice that Pyre spoke with the same particular slur that Lily did, and that led to a lot of other logical leaps he made in an instant. Lily knew this dragon well, she had spent enough time with him to talk like him. They were close, very close, from the easy, casual way she spoke to him and from how highly she held his opinion.
"Kind of," Gold admitted, inching forward as he slowly regained his composure. He shouldn't have been so shocked by a simple enough trick, but the flawlessness with which it had been pulled off was another thing entirely. Pyre lying in a vulnerable position and not looking at him helped him shake off the intimidation.
"Well, consider that test of your mettle too, then," Pyre rumbled. "Lily, would you mind much if I spoke to him privately for just a few moments?"
"I'll give you as long as it takes me to walk down to the valley and back," Lily volunteered. "And I want him back as confident and relaxed as he was before you scared him."
"I'll do my best," Pyre promised. Both he and Gold watched her go.
A few moments later, Pyre closed his eyes and rumbled quietly to himself. "Lily," he called out loudly, "I know you're listening in. I meant really alone!"
Another long beat of silence elapsed.
"Gold, go over to the ledge and look to the side," Pyre instructed idly. "You should be able to see her walking from there."
Before Gold could even move, there was a quiet rustle of rocks falling, seemingly by chance.
"And now we are alone," Pyre laughed. "She must really wonder what I will say, to try and listen in after I called her out."
"You are not mad at her?" Gold asked, overcoming his lingering intimidation with curiosity.
"No, it's just how she is," Pyre admitted. "Always snooping, always curious. She trusts me, and she tells me she is beginning to trust you, but she may very well not trust us to get along."
"Will we?" Gold asked, hating the quiver in his voice. He just couldn't help it; the only males he knew were all spineless or like Cedar, immature and annoying. He barely knew Claw and tried to avoid him. This male was the exact opposite, and carried a weight of age that even Claw could not manage. Even his worthless wings added to his appearance, making him seem unapproachably different.
"That depends." Pyre's eyes narrowed and turned to bore into his own once more. "I consider her my daughter. I would kill for her. So long as you respect her and treat her right, we will get along marvelously. I will even give you the benefit of doubt and assume all she told me of how you have acted up until recently is not really you."
Gold gulped nervously.
"I will do that for her sake," Pyre continued in the same cold, dangerous voice, his words underlaid with an ongoing snarl. "Because she plans to fix whatever needs to be fixed about you, and because she does not have any other options right now, and because so far you have exceeded her every expectation, low as they were. I will not interfere between you overmuch, either, because I know better. But if she comes crying to me about something horrible you have done, I will literally rip you apart, or die trying. Is that clear?"
Gold nodded, unable to even contemplate doing anything else. Maybe being under Lily's control wouldn't be so bad. It would protect him from this male's rage, since he would not be able to think much for himself and thus couldn't harm her, even accidentally…
Pyre relaxed his piercing glare and warbled happily. "Good. We are done with the obligatory 'I will kill you if you harm her' speech, and while I meant every word I don't think I need to worry too much."
Gold gaped at him, not caring about appearances anymore.
"Something tells me it will take a while for you to feel comfortable around me," Pyre mused, seemingly unbothered by the lack of response, "so I will not try to have a conversation right now. Instead, I would give you a few pieces of advice. I want to see the both of you happy, ideally, and I know Lily very well. There are a few simple things you can keep in mind that will make living with her much, much easier."
A waved paw was all Gold could manage, but he did manage it.
"Always ask her what is wrong, and do not take 'nothing' for an answer," Pyre began. "This is a more general tip, not specific to her, but it is a good one. With Lily specifically, try to suggest solutions to the problem, as well as commiserating. Most people would not like that, but she will."
That was good advice, and Gold was glad he had already begun to do as much, at least with the first part of it. Offering solutions hadn't really come up yet, and he would have thought she wouldn't like that; in his experience females wanted sympathy, not solutions, but he could try the other way.
"You should also try to push her to have fun," Pyre added, tapping his tail on the ground. "She might not want to sometimes, and of course, you should know when to back off, but she might need more pushing than you think. She does sometimes latch onto projects and not let herself relax. I have helped counter that in the past, but I think she will be relying more on you than me from now on."
"Okay," Gold said, his voice steadier than it had any right to be.
"Good, you're speaking again," Pyre purred. "Finally, don't let her push you around. She won't like a pushover, even if she acts like she thinks you should be one. Push back, where appropriate. She's not always right, and as long as you only push when you really think she is wrong, she will come to respect you for doing so."
"Really?" He meant it as a more general question, because this was not at all the tone he had expected the advice to take.
"Yes, she will," Pyre confirmed. "She is not the kind of person to hold a grudge over being opposed or proven wrong, so long as it isn't rubbed in her face long afterward. Be assertive and considerate, and you won't have any problems. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," Gold replied. "I understand."
Pyre smirked at that. "If you were not already her mate I'd let you call me Sir, but it feels like it's too late for that. Pyre or nothing, for you. We're family, in a sense, so you don't get to be distant."
"Understood." He would like to be casual around this male, but that was going to take practice. It was a good thing Pyre seemed to be something of a secret, Gold didn't want anyone seeing him like this. It would be humiliating, and he'd never hear the end of it from someone like Cedar.
"And now, we're going to use this remaining time to try and put you back to normal," Pyre remarked. "I would ask you about yourself, but that's more likely to put you on the defensive, so I want you to ask me about myself for a little while. Your questions will tell me about you almost as well as answers to my questions would."
If that was meant to be reassuring, it missed the mark, because now Gold was nervous about how his questions would be interpreted. He settled for an easy, innocent one to start with. "What does your name mean?"
"My name? I suppose you would not know, it is not as if they are in use here," Pyre said slowly. "A pyre is a pile of wood, one with a specific purpose, usually used by No-scaled-not-prey to burn their dead."
"What kind of name is that?" Gold blurted out, startled out of his nervousness by the sheer ridiculousness of what he had heard.
"A sad one taken up by someone who does not have much hope," Pyre said somberly. "It doesn't fit me so well nowadays, and I was not given it by my parents… You know, I may have to think about going back to my first name someday soon. That is an interesting idea. Ask me something else."
The obvious question was easy enough. "What was your first name?"
"Ah, that would be telling, wouldn't it?" Pyre retorted casually. "Lily doesn't even know that, and I'd never hear the end of it if she found out I told you before her."
"No, I wouldn't," Lily agreed, walking up the path and stopping to stare at the two of them. "So?"
"He's talking again, and that's no small feat," Pyre said knowingly. "I think there is potential here."
"That's just your way of saying he's not said anything obviously despicable yet," Lily quipped, looking from one of them to the other and back again.
"Sit by your mate," Pyre said firmly. "It would look like we were interrogating him if you sat with me."
"Instead, you will be interrogating us," Lily joked, going to sit right by Gold, lightly laying her tail on top of his.
"The opposite, actually. I asked him to ask me whatever questions came to mind." Pyre flicked his tail in Gold's direction. "What is your next one? Ask anything. Some things are not fun to talk about, but I can answer anything."
Gold nodded, feeling much more confident with Lily beside him. One thing was for sure; when he did eventually bring up the events of the day before and their cause, which he still meant to at some point, he wasn't going to do it rudely. He understood, now, why Lily took Pyre's words to heart. He was the kind of dragon who did not say things lightly.
That made the advice he had given all the more important, too. He would have to think about what Pyre had said later.
Right now, though, he would have to come up with a question, and fast, before they thought he was refusing to speak for some reason.
"Who are you?" he blurted out. "I mean," he hastily clarified, "why are you up here? How do you know Lily? How are the two of you related? What happened to your wings?"
"That'll take all day!" Lily mock-complained, lightly slapping him with her tail.
"But we do have all day," Pyre countered. "Where to begin?"
Author's Note: Just in case anyone thinks this ending is some sort of cliffhanger, it's not; Pyre's just going to fill Gold in on the stuff Lily either directly took part in or has already heard about. That's why I cut off there; there's a lot of stuff we know that Gold doesn't, and this is a good chance to correct that off-camera.
Also, just as a more general note, I had fun sending Gold over to meet Pyre, because Gold is full of himself and Pyre is very much, in many ways, what Gold thinks he is, only more intense and better. Gold would be intimidated by him no matter what by the time they got to the 'I'll rip you to pieces if you hurt her' part of their introduction. And of course, any time spent with Pyre in my writing is time well spent; I like his character and don't mind in the slightest saving his life in this AU. In a happier world, Pyre definitely lives. And Granite too, but that's another AU…
In case anyone is wondering about the bit about Pyre's name, no, I'm not going to reveal it here. Why? I can't answer even that question without spoiling something else, either in NSSA or in the main story. It's not plot-important here, so it's not going to happen. He does have an original name, though, and has since the beginning. In fact, in the first draft of Usurpation of the Darkness, he reveals it to Lily right before the Pyre scenes I showed in an earlier chapter of No Story Stands Alone. That obviously doesn't happen in the actual story, though, so that name fell through the cracks of the plot. Guesses are welcome if anyone wants to try a shot in the dark!