Chapter 5: Attempted Escape
Kashira left the bunny where he was in the bathtub. Would he run for it? She felt he probably would as soon as he thought she was far enough away and he was dry enough.
She didn’t worry herself about it. With all this fresh snow, it would be simple to tell exactly where he went and fly to him. Meanwhile, she wanted to check the situation with his hometown. He said he lived near the lake, and it had to be within his walking distance in the blizzard, so he must be from Buetarn.
The weather was fresh and nice after the storm as she flew south toward the large lake. She had never flown there before, at least not close. She knew most of the population were fishers and farmers, and mostly jayune with a few minotaur, Grinwild kobolds, and fae-touched dwarves and elves... all of which would be skittish around something much smaller than a dragon. She didn’t want to feel like she was terrorizing them by just existing, so she had been avoiding the whole area. It was about an hour of flight south for her. There was no smoke in the atmosphere, but as she did a broad circle around the town, she could see that several of the buildings had burned. There were definitely gnolls moving around, at least twice or more the size of the rabbit she had at home. They must have come down from Ledondale forests and taken everything for themselves, she thought.
She knew it had been a bad winter. She did sometimes fly near Ledondale, and there had been a lot of fresh graves last month, so she assumed there had been a plague. With the early onset of snow and the dry summer before, she wondered if they had been struggling with famine as well. They must have been really desperate. Gnolls don’t usually get together in packs bigger than a dozen, but there are many more of them than that here. She heard the characteristic uncanny laughter as they communicated back and forth. I wonder how rough it had been for them to move and attack in winter, she thought as she tipped a wing to turn a circle.
It left her with a dilemma, though, when it came to her little found bunny boy. If he had any family, they were presently in the possession of gnolls, if they were still alive. The town was clearly being locked down; she didn’t see even one jayune moving around. She did laps for a time until she knew she had been noticed by the number of people taking cover. The problem with gnolls and lizardfolk is that they’ll eat absolutely anything in a pinch. She would turn and head west, not wanting to fly right back home until she had left the sight of the people in the town. She didn’t need any attention from them, good or bad.
Look at that, boot tracks leaving my castle. They were heading north. I guess he already knows that he’s probably on his own, she thought as she followed them. Poor thing. She felt a lot of empathy all at once for him, and she breathed out a long breath that steamed around her nose to push the feeling down.
Then, she considered how she wished to handle his time-out because it gave her room not to think about her own tragedies.
Goren hadn’t been perfectly dry. Her scent still clung to his fur, even with his clothes back on. He shivered a little each time the breeze picked up. At first, he had run, but he was a bit tired now, and steam was coming off him as the sun moved into the late afternoon position. He had some of his trail rations, knowing there wasn’t a lot left. If I can find a safe town, I can try to find some sort of work, even if it isn’t painting, and feed myself.
The jayune walked along, the trees starting to thin a little as he got nearer to the mountain pass that he was angling toward. He felt like it had only been two or three hours since he escaped, but that was still a long time, so he thought he was going to get enough distance to hide somewhere. He began to wonder if she had just been bluffing after all about finding and punishing him.
Then, on the white snow, he saw the big shadow. Then he heard her wings as she started to land. “Aw, hell,” he muttered. He froze in place, not looking at her as she sent a chilly blast of air around him from her flapping wings. Snow flurried everywhere, stirred up by her. Snow crunched loudly under her feet; she was just so big.
He felt her looking down at him. “So, little brat bunbun, let’s talk this through. You were going to try to cross the mountains to reach the next nearest town. It is probably a two- or three-day walk. It might not storm, but it will be cold. You are not particularly equipped to survive that, but maybe you thought you could walk it. Do you know what lies on the other side of those mountains right now?”
He stared up at her. “It’s been a while since I’ve been to Ledondale, but I know it’s there,” he said flatly. She was so smug acting, it made him angry, even though he knew he should be a little more afraid of her.
“I suspect you will find bellies much hungrier than mine there.” She leaned forward, her breath curling around him as her lips parted near him.
He was tense. “Why all this interest in me? What does it matter to you if I don’t make it through the mountain pass or if I end up like…” but he felt a tightness in his chest as he couldn’t say the rest of the thought.
“I am not overcomplicating this, but you are,” she said, still breathing near him, her steamy breath curling around him as she spoke. “You came into my home; I claimed you as mine. I did not have to; as I have been clear about from the beginning, I am doing what I want to do.”
He put his hands on her nose and pushed it back. “So, what if what you want to do one day is have jayune for dinner?”
She smiled. “If that is the case, then how will you be better or worse off after escaping me to where someone else could decide a cute white and brown spotted bunny boy looks delicious?”
He folded his arms and scowled at her. “Because I won’t know that’s what they might be up to, but you seem to be trying to… condition me to act how you like. Also, you are not allowed to just claim people belong to you, even if you are a big scary lizard.”
She laughed. “My goodness, you are sometimes so blunt.” She hummed. “Well, there is no one here to enforce that I can’t just make you mine; there is just you and me out here,” she observed with a raised brow ridge.
“I don’t care; I don’t want to be bullied by you.” His heart started to race as she leaned in and pushed her nose against him.
He pushed it back; she was still smiling at him. “Well, you aren’t heading north by yourself, whether this makes me a bully or not. But what if I fly you somewhere else, if you want to see another town so badly?”
“And what is the trick to that? Why would you?” He felt overwhelmed by her.
“Again, why not? It is not as though I have a busy schedule of social interactions. Or work to do.”
He closed his eyes, feeling her breath mist and curl around him. “So… I’m a stranger who wandered into your life, and you’re just… going to do whatever comes into your head because of that? And what do you want from me?”
“Why should I not? I want to, so I will.”
He tapped his toe, opening his eyes and looking at her; she was grinning at him. “I might be a terrible person. I could have killed someone, or I will rob you, or might be a mean person… I dunno. You don’t know me. I don’t know you.”
She contemplated this for a couple of heartbeats. “These are good concerns to have from a point of view where you are smaller than most everyone, which you are. But, killer, thief, liar… what do I have to fear if any of those are true?”
He blinked.
“Besides, you aren’t a thief, or you would have some of my hoard on you now, but you are only trying to steal yourself from me. And I can’t imagine someone as blunt as you being particularly deceptive; the one lie you managed was pretty terrible and easy to see through.”
He huffed. “I still don’t understand you.”
“Now, I am a dragon of my word. I said I would put you in time-out if you dared to leave the tent. Here I find you in the cold. Anything you don’t want to also wash again along with your body? Take it off.”
He stared up at her. Her tone was so… frank and almost stern with him that he had a feeling that if he tried to argue it, it would somehow not go anywhere. She was stubborn, and her points were just logical enough he didn’t know what to do about them. Even so, he took a deep breath, opening his mouth to try to argue.
“Three… two…” she started counting down on him.
“Stop,” he said with some distress, sliding his backpack off and opening it to stuff in his coat and hood. “I can’t… even…”
“One,” she said, her breath curling around him as she got a hold of his bare upper half with her mouth, steam coming off her saliva and breath.
“Stop! I’m not even undressed yet!” he complained as he more or less had to shove his pants down and kick off his shoes as she slurped down on him.
The pressure was surreal over his shoulders and head as she slurped him into her mouth. He was less… frozen this time. His heart didn’t race as much. Of course, he’d been here once already today as her mouth closed over him.