Fic: Flying upwards over the mountain [1/?], R

[reikah]

Title: Flying upwards over the mountain [1/?]
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Pairing: Fai/Kurogane/Yuui
Author: reikah
Rating: PG-13 currently, will rise to R.
Word count: 5708 this chapter.
Notes: AU. Returning wounded from a mission to a neighboring country, Kurogane is rescued by a mysterious mute hermit with a curious pet eagle. There is more to both man and bird than meets the eye, however, and fairy tales meet Kurogane pretty much head on.

[1] [2]

once upon a time there was a forest, a dark and dangerous place where no good came to pass. mist rolled through the trees and nothing good and clean lived there. armies would match for months to avoid it; animals that entered never returned; birds would fly over it.

it was a forest full of werewolves and trolls, where the bright glint of a lake concealed a kappa often as not, where demons dwelled. it was an old forest, so old it had never known the blade of an axe or the footstep of a hunter, and for years nothing human lived there.

and then came the two who were one; a terrible sorcerer, some said. a man who controlled the devil itself in the form of a monstrous bird. others said the man himself was the bird; others said there were two men, or two birds. the man who might be a bird was a crafty creature, a cursed creature, and he lived alone in a house of bile and hate, sewing a robe of black magic. it was said he sewed with a needle of human bone and a thread made of hair from his every victim, and if he sewed your name into his evil robe, you would meet an untimely death.

well, would you brave the woods?

They stopped chasing him at the forest boundary.

His horse was dying under him, foundering, and he drove it on with the flat of his sword, teeth gritted against the pain. His blood had soaked through his clothing, and there was a sizable stain pouring down the horse's steel grey side; he'd taken an arrow to the shoulder, at least, and the cuts across his ribs made him breathless. The pain he felt from his ribs was eclipsed only by his broken arm, which sent warm waves of agony through him with every lurching, stumbling step the horse took. The reins were looped over the saddle bow; he stayed mounted through bloody minded stubbornness alone, directing the beast with his thighs.

They had been hounding him for hours, at this point. The rest of his unit had died at their hands, but he had to return to the castle, had to bring his news back if it was the last thing he did. The forest might be cursed but it also contained the fastest route back; the fact that his pursuers were foolishly superstitious was an unexpected bonus.

The forest seemed less threatening at speed, even in the dark. They splashed through a stream of murky black water, his horse struggling up the far bank; it was holding up about as well as could be expected given that its condition wasn't much better than his. Kurogane cursed and hit it again. The further it could take him before it finally died, the better.

Fucking Valeria. It was a cesspit of a country, anyway, a small unimportant place on the edge of the world. Its chief export was its furs and its small, semi-precious stones, and it was not worth dying for and so he wouldn't. He wouldn't have even needed to be in the fucking place if its larger neighbor hadn't conquered it. Kendappa had sent him and his comrades to see what the mood was like, and fuck, his horse was slowing down, it would be dead soon, and he was still at least a week away from Shirasagi on foot.

He made it a further fifteen minutes before the beast collapsed on the banks of another stream, a deeper one. He managed to roll off it in time to avoid crushing his leg, but it was a close thing. His vision sparked and whited out for a moment, but there was no sound of pursuit. If he could just - staunch the bleeding, he could -

He pulled aside his cloak and for a moment he could so nothing but stare. He thought he could see bone through the torn remnants of his armor, but he wasn't sure. He should wash it, he thought muzzily. Clean the wound.

It was hard to walk to the stream - his knees felt weak and his legs seemed to shake. He didn't have a cup and his helmet was the wrong shape, so when he got to the water he had to drop to his knees and dip his hands in. The water looked almost black in the absence of light, but it was clear and colorless in his palm, and smelled right, so he carefully trickled it over the wound.

A wolf howled mournfully in the distance, and wing beats sounded above him. He looked up, thinking he could see a silhouette against the starry sky; a shape moved on one of the branches. Just a bird, he thought, and scooped up another handful of water.

The fluttering sound came again, closer, and when he looked up this time he thought he recognized the outline of the bird; an eagle, which had no business flying anywhere at night. The superstitious muttering concerning this forest came to him then, but Kurogane had never had time for folklore even when he wasn't on an urgent mission, and so he poured the water over his side and pulled his tanto out from his belt, laying it prominently on the rock next to him. Let this so-called sorcerer come. No wizard could stand good strong steel, especially not with six inches of it buried in his gut.

The eagle croaked at him, that horribly unmajestic noise that always sounded so strange coming from such big birds, and then launched itself into the air with a frenetic beat of its wings; Kurogane tensed, but it was flying away from him. Good. He'd been stupid anyway, getting worked up over a stupid bird; what could a bird do against an armored man?

He leaked a few more handfuls of water over the wounds, and then took off his cloak and, using his teeth and the tanto, tore it in half. With fumbling fingers he tied the larger half as tight as he could around his middle. It was hard to tie knots one-handed, but his other arm hurt too much to move. Fashioning a sling out of the other half was near impossible, so he settled for wrapping his broken arm up tightly and then tucking the spare ends of the cloth under the shoulder strap of his armor.

Slowly he got to his feet. The parts of him that didn't outright hurt ached. He was still bleeding, and every part of his body was announcing its impending retirement, but he thought he could make it at least to the northern village. Perhaps he could find someone there to bring his message to the capital.

Around him the forest seemed full of teeming life. He picked Ginryuu up; it had been strapped to the horse's saddle, but thankfully not on the side the beast had collapsed toward. His family blade fit neatly at his waist like it always did.

His boots scuffed up clods of dirt and leaf mould as he staggered onward, steadying himself against trees. He left smears of red behind on the bark, stains that shone wet and bright, and each step seemed to take more out of him. His sword felt heavier with each dragging moment, but he knew he couldn't stop; he was the only survivor of the scouting mission, he had to press ahead.

Kurogane kept on grimly as his wounds pumped more blood into his clothing, as the wolf howls grew nearer. His feet seemed to lag lower with every step, his breath seemed to come harder, but his determination was ferocious, and he was famed at court for being stubborn for a goddamn reason. There was a deep aching burn in his muscles, and his vision seemed lighter at the edges. His head felt strange, woozy like he'd taken a whack to the skull. He leaned heavily against an oak tree and panted for a moment.

An eagle landed on the branch of the tree opposite him, its shadow unmissable even in the dark, and he glared at it. It probably wasn't the same one. Was it? His thoughts seemed slow and distant, and the tree felt so comfortable.

Perhaps he could stop here, just for a while. Just to catch his breath.

The eagle spread its wings and called softly as he slid to the ground, which felt softer than the best cushion he'd felt. Ginryuu was wedged tightly against the tree, her hilt jabbing into his spine, but he felt too tired to move it. The arrow wound on his shoulder was still bleeding, and he could feel the stickiness of his armor where it touched both that and the rib-deep cut against his side. He'd suffered worse, of course, he wasn't going to die here, just... stop. For now.

The last thing he saw before the dark took him was the outline of the eagle in the tree, and distantly, through the thick trunks, a shining light that could have been a torch.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, alternating between patches of blackness and vivid bright dreams full of colour and fear. One day he rode through the forest fleeing pursuers, but his horse ran through a thorn bush the likes of which he'd never seen and the wicked barbs actively chased him, impaling him; another time he saw faceless shadows writhing and twisting through the air, insubstantial and wraith-like. He saw a man in black robes, the flash of a pair of eye-glasses; he saw a girl whose face was hidden in shadow, but whose eyes glowed brilliantly green.

One particularly nasty dream came halfway through. He was in a cold room - it felt high up, the air was thin. Someone he loved was next to him, their fingers were entwined, but the other person was dying, their blood oozing across the floor until it filled the room, ankle-deep and then higher; and it crept up to cover his mouth and he tried to sit up but couldn't, his ribs one long scream of pain. The blood kept flowing, pouring from the person he loved, and it covered his mouth and poured oily and slick down his nose, it was in his throat, coppery and sweet, and he found himself crying with pain and guilt as he drowned; words poured out of his throat: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you.

He dreamed something cold was touching his face then and recoiled violently, flailing out with his fists; he hit it solidly, he could feel the starburst of pain across his knuckles, but then his wrists were pressed down firmly and bound together. The unseen thing he had struck morphed in his eyes to a glowing blue-eyed demon, that bared its fangs and roared; he growled back it, furious and belligerent until the end. Fuck you.

At one point he was in his childhood home, watching his mother spin brilliantly colored threads between her fingers. She wore the light shift she wore in the house, when she did not have to be the shrine Miko and the village mage, its weather-witch and seer and mind-reader. Her eyes glowed faintly as she spun, a dull green that felt like home. I miss you, he told her. I think I'm dying. She looked up at that and shook her head, fondly patronizing, the expression she always wore when he was wrong about something but she loved him anyway, and then she faded into smoke.

He saw Tomoyo standing by her scrying pool, her hair loose and unbound; he was standing in front of her with the water between them. He cried out to her as she touched her fingers to the surface of the pool, and as he did so the waters began to churn violently and she started backward, away from him. Princess, he thought fitfully. Princess, I tried.

He dreamed he was an eagle, soaring in the thermals over the wide green expanse of forest. His feathers shifted in the wind; he flew lazily, with nothing else to do and no particularly pressing need to hunt. He felt dimly his own surprise at his presence, as though he were two beings at once, and then the bird banked downward toward the woods and his thoughts unraveled into explosions of color and the sweet stench of infected wounds.

He jerked awake to find he was soaked through but with sweat rather than blood. Movement caught his eye; a person sat next to him, and with every gesture of their arms a brilliant rainbow trail curled through the air following their movement. Please, Kurogane tried to say, but couldn't remember what it was he was asking for. His joints felt full of ground glass and steel. The rainbow figure placed a finger to his lips, and then drew a shining blue rune in the air.

He slept.

When he awoke next the brilliant false edges had faded from his vision. He was lying on something soft, with what felt like an entire country's worth of furs and blankets piled on top of him; he flexed his fingers and toes and was unsurprised to find hot, wrapped rocks had been pressed against his side. He'd been feverish before, but never that bad. His skin felt gross with dried sweat, and now his fever had broken he felt stifled and burning, but when he moved to push some of the furs off him his ribs and shoulder both hissed a warning, sharp jagged bolts of pain that made him white out temporarily.

It hurt to move his neck and look around, but Kurogane forced himself to do so. He was in a circular hut or cabin of rough-hewn wood, not of Nihon design; it smelled of smoke and meat and the faint reek of sickness. He figured he was responsible for the latter; a fire on a raised stone dais in the center of the room accounted for the smoke. There was a cauldron suspended over the fire on a steel spit, which probably provided the meat portion of the scent triad. He sniffed, experimentally, and was relieved; he would recognize the scent of venison anywhere.

Deer had been quite common in Suwa, as a landlocked province with only a river to provide fish, and his father had been generous allowing his people to hunt them; it was impossible to stand in Suwa village and not smell venison stewing in dozens of cookpots. His mother used to prepare a wonderful broth, before she grew too sick to help with the household chores and instead chose to focus her powers on the shrine. Somehow the smell reassured him, even now, even in a stranger's home.

His head pounded with a dull, insistent ache, and his throat was dry; there was a jug on the table next to his bed along with a small clay cup. Moving like an old man, Kurogane fretfully pushed some of the furs away and tried to reach for it, but his hands were shaking badly and he broke into a sweat just at this much exertion. He had just bitterly collapsed against the bed again when the door blew open, letting in a swirl of snowflakes, and a tall man in a long, hooded coat.

There was a dark leather glove on one hand, stretching over the sleeve of the coat, and a tawny eagle was perched on it, unhooded and unjessed. His other arm was occupied pinning something against his chest, and so he had to lean against the door and bodily force it closed, but not before letting in a draft of icy air that made Kurogane wish he had not pushed the furs away. The man wore that thick coat, but Kurogane himself had only bandages across his chest. It hadn't been anywhere near snowing, the last he remembered clearly, and he wondered how long he had been sick for.

The bird took off from the man's arm while he was busy securing a latch on the door, and Kurogane tracked it as it flew to a wooden stake jutting out of the wall itself at the foot of his bed. It resettled its wings and shifted a little on the perch, its long talons digging into the wood, and cocked its head at Kurogane, intense golden eyes focusing on his face. It called, a light eee sound that was strange for such a large creature.

The stranger whirled and stared at Kurogane, and as the building was alien to Nihon, so too was this man; tall and pale, with silver-blond hair that looked more Valerian than anything else, and bright blue eyes currently wide in surprise. Kurogane studied him in fascination, aware that it was a mutual thing, and said nothing, waiting for the stranger to speak; instead the man lifted his hand and jabbed a finger to his chest, as if indicating himself, and then raised it and drew a line across his lips. Kurogane frowned.

"I speak Valerian," he said in that tongue, before switching back to his, "as well as Nihongo. Do you?" His voice was raspy and hoarse, even to his own ears, and his lungs felt heavy and wet in his chest; he coughed despite himself. The stranger pulled back his hood with the arm clad in the falconry glove and deposited the item he'd been holding underneath his other arm on a poorly carved worktable near the door. It was a slab of meat, wet and red and cut, and Kurogane narrowed his eyes at the sight of it.

Casually the blond peeled off the falconry gauntlet and then his long and heavy overcoat, revealing a pale tunic underneath that was washed but stained; it covered him from ankle to throat. He tossed it onto a second table, his remaining glove following, and then stamped ice off his boots. The eagle called softly to him and he paused to scratch its nares; it flipped its wings and crooned like a cat in contentment.

"How long have I been here?" Kurogane asked in his native language, narrowing his eyes, and the blond held up three fingers. "Days?" he asked hopefully, but already knew he would not be so lucky before the man started shaking his head. Weeks, then. Just his luck. The sooner he was on his way the better; Amaterasu would not wait forever.

The stranger crossed to his bedside and took the jug Kurogane had reached for, pouring the water therein into the clay cup. He offered this to Kurogane, helping him steady it; Kurogane felt a humiliated flush creep through his cheeks at being so damn dependent. At least the blond wasn't laughing at him; he was studying Kurogane's face even as he drank, which wasn't that much better. If Kurogane hadn't been so fucking thirsty he might have made a scene, rescuer or not, but the water was sweet on his tongue.

He drank slowly, allowing himself small mouthfuls and swallowing those a bit at a time, and the stranger raised an eyebrow in approval. He had a handsome face, sharp-featured and young; he looked too young to be a hermit, too smooth and unscarred to be an ordinary woodsman, even in these woods. He had a faint greenish bruise over one eye, and Kurogane abruptly remembered his fever dreams; checking, he saw matching bruising across the knuckles of his left hand and winced.

"Thanks for saving me," he mumbled after the cup was empty and his throat felt less parched. The blond just smiled, a courtier's smile, all light and no warmth, and shrugged like it was no big deal. Like he saved dying men in these woods all the time, and nursed them back to health over three weeks when his supplies must surely be stretched alone out here on a regular basis. He hadn't talked, and the pantomime gestures he'd made at the start indicated he wouldn't, either.

"Are you a mute?" Kurogane asked. His voice sounded a lot less wrecked now he'd had something to drink, but it was still gruff. "Or under a vow?"

The man held up two fingers, indicating the second option.

"You got a name?"

Another smile, this one accompanied with an eye roll, the flaw in asking a mute for something as complex as a name spelled out. Kurogane colored angrily, but the stranger was already turning away from him; he bent smoothly over the edge of the bed and his shoulders jerked as he fished around for something on the floor with both hands. When he sat up, Ginryuu was balanced across his palms, sheathed. Kurogane bristled.

"That's my sword," he said, warningly, although he felt weak as a kitten right now and wasn't sure he could beat even this scrawny foreigner in a fight. The blond had to have some hidden reserve of strength to have dragged him all the way back here, wherever here was.

The stranger nodded amiably enough, however, and leaned over Kurogane to prop his father's sword between the wall and himself. She didn't fit quite comfortably, but Kurogane felt something in his chest loosen in relief at having her there. The eagle made a small, irate noise from its perch, and the blond turned to look at it.

He was still wearing that idle fake courtier's smile, that twisted his mouth and didn't touch those brilliant eyes. His hair fell raggedly long around his jawline, and the collar of his tunic was turned high, no doubt to protect from the biting cold, but Kurogane thought he saw a glimpse - a flash - of silver around his throat for a second as he moved, before whatever it was fell beneath the concealment of fabric once more.

Kurogane wondered how lonely a man had to be to go this much effort on behalf of a stranger, and then cut that train of thought off. It was uncomfortably close to home.

The stranger was a solicitous and amiable host, which was better than Kurogane could have asked for, as he was an awful patient. He hated being dependent on others, and if his message hadn't been urgent he would have tried to leave much sooner. As it was, he lasted a week - a week of sleeping back his strength from the blood loss and fever, and relying on the stranger to help him eat and drink and piss, for gods' sakes, a week of allowing the stranger to examine his wounds, getting closer than he liked people to get - before he had enough and decided he would be well enough to trudge not to Shirasagi, but to the northernmost Nihon village.

He realized after perhaps a half-week that he had been placed in the blond's own bed, and at the time he merely felt stupid for not noticing sooner; of course the man only had one bed. The stranger himself had been sleeping on the floor, when he slept at all.

The stranger - who he was mentally starting to think of as Eagle, for his bird, which went everywhere he did and seemed to respond to him less like a bird of prey and more like a more domesticated animal, like a dog - seemed to spend an awful lot of time outside his cabin. He was out when dawn struck and out at twilight, too, with his eagle by his side, and he only returned late at night with his blue eyes glowing faintly as though he had just performed magic. Maybe Kurogane was just sleeping through his coming and going, which was highly unlikely but not impossible given how fucking weak he felt - but the man seemed to be outside for a large amount of time, only returning to check on his dressings or stew up more food.

Kurogane said nothing. He thought he remembered the rune drawn shining in the air from his fever dream; he was too sick to move himself, he could offer this strange magician woodsman nothing.

He still hadn't said a word, and he was a mystery. His coloring marked him quite clearly as being gaijin, but his clothing was in the northern Nihon style, and there were many tools and utensils inside the hut that looked Nihingo in make. The hut itself looked Valerian, from what Kurogane had seen of their houses while he had been in that country, but from the level of smoke staining the walls he rather suspected it was older than Eagle.

Other than that there was nothing abnormal about it, not really. It was normal from the strings of drying vegetables hanging from the roof to the firewood stacked inside to keep it dry from the snow, and none of it told him anything useful about the stranger, and with Eagle himself studiously keeping outside and thus unavailable for questioning Kurogane found himself...

... Well, bored.

It was a strange feeling. He hadn't been bored for this long before; even when he wasn't actively out on assignment, back at Shirasagi, there were assassination plots to foil and intelligence to gather, or political scheming to watch over from the outside while guarding the Tsukuyomi. He couldn't recall the last time he'd been stuck for this long with nothing to do but heal, and resolved to get done with it and get on the road as soon as possible.

It was still a week before he could sit up by himself, though. Eagle had changed his bandages, sniffing the old ones for signs of infection, before smiling at Kurogane to let him know he had escaped the worst. The wound over his ribs pulled every time he moved; Eagle had stuck padding over it with a kind of sticky foul-smelling poultice smeared over it, and then wound long bandages around Kurogane torso and shoulder to keep it in place. He had been very close to Kurogane while he worked, and Kurogane, who didn't particularly wish to see his own wound, had kept his eyes firmly fixed on that crown of blond hair.

When he was satisfied the bandages were secured, Eagle stepped back to the cauldron and filled Kurogane a bowl of the brown bubbling stew therein; he pulled a face as he passed it over, as if to apologize for its tastelessness. Kurogane didn't care; it was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted, especially because he could eat it himself without the blond's help steadying the bowl. His hands only shook a little bit as he spooned up the stew, and when he was finished he put it back in the bowl and passed it back to Eagle, who was watching him with his arms folded. His bird was on its perch by the foot of the bed, preening.

"I need to get home," Kurogane said, and the stranger's expression changed subtlety. He pressed his bare hands to the bed, preparing to push himself to his feet, and Eagle took a step back. "I have an important message to deliver for my boss. Thank you for your hospitality."

Eagle smiled then, a heavy-lidded thing that didn't look quite real, and unfurled his arms; he pointed at Kurogane with one hand, then wrapped the others tightly around his sides and mimed violent shivering. Kurogane scowled, but Eagle wasn't finished; he pinched at the fabric of his coat, pointed at Kurogane again, and then touched his ribs where Kurogane's own wound had been located, indicating a hole in the fabric of the coat. He then mimed the wound reopening, with a lot of finger wriggling that Kurogane took to mean blood.

"I've survived with worse," Kurogane told him darkly, and Eagle rolled his eyes and raised his arm up, flapping his thumb against his stiff fingers to convey that Kurogane's words were just hot air. Kurogane growled at him warningly and Eagle stared at him with wide eyes before he caught himself; he didn't want to intimidate the man who had saved his life. Before he could apologize however, Eagle's eyes crinkled in amusement and he threw his head back, his shoulders shaking, and it took Kurogane a second to realize the idiot was laughing at him in his silent way. "The hell is with you, idiot?" he said, disgruntled.

Eagle pointed at him, then back at himself; he bared his teeth, then let his tongue loll out while pressing his fists against his ears, both fingers sticking up like shiba inu ears. The implication was quite clear: Kurogane was like a dog. The idiot's pet bird chirruped as if agreeing with him. Kurogane scowled at him, trying to work out why he had ever been curious about the gods damned moron.

The moron in question was walking now over to the cabin door, which he opened with a grand flourish, and Kurogane grunted as the icy air hit his bare torso. The world outside was white, and the wind, which had been a piercing whistle from inside the cabin, had a baying quality to it. The blond wasn't smiling anymore; he pointed at Kurogane and then out of the door, at the wintry landscape, and then fanned his fingers in front of his face, waggling them as if to indicate what Kurogane could lose to frostbite, and then held a hand out at about chest height. Kurogane took this to mean snow depth.

"I can't stay here for the whole winter," said Kurogane, wishing the man would close the damn door. He cast a quick glance around for his clothing, and, not seeing it, hauled the blanket around his shoulders. He was beginning to feel a little dizzy from sitting upright for so long, but was determined not to show it; the blond just raised an eyebrow.

For a long moment they just stared at each other, Kurogane growing increasingly irritated. Who was this man, to think he could order Kurogane around? He'd saved Kurogane's life, that didn't mean he could issue orders. With a growl, Kurogane forced himself up to his feet and up to his full height, swaying slightly, and through his vertigo he had the satisfaction of seeing the blond's eyes widen at just how tall he was. "Where are my clothes?" he said, trying to shake away the dizziness, and the blond's mouth went flat.

Before Kurogane could stop him Eagle had darted from the door to the bed and seized something - seized Ginryuu. Kurogane growled, lunging for his sword, but Eagle danced back a few steps, back to the door, and waggled the blade at him with a sly, teasing expression on his stupid face.

"Don't touch my fucking sword," Kurogane snarled, and the blond looked down at the blade in his hands and then half-twisted to toss it casually over his shoulder, out the door and into the snow. Kurogane stared at him, open-mouthed and utterly caught off guard by the sheer stupidity of the movement. Did the moron not know about Nihon's warriors and their swords? The eagle whistled at its master, but the man simply rolled one shoulder loosely, smirking as if challenging Kurogane to come at him.

Instead, Kurogane staggered over to the door and brushed past the man, shouldering him out of the way and scanning the snowy outside for his sword. He saw her in the end, more for her scabbard than anything else, dark against the whiteness of the fresh-falling flakes. The snowdrifts came to knee-height already, although they had been trampled down around the entrance to the cabin, and Ginryuu stuck proudly out of one such snowdrift not twenty feet away.

He didn't have any shoes and nothing but bandages on his torso, and his head was pounding with a dull sort of ache, but he set one foot carefully on the tramped down path, gritting his teeth at the flaring cold against the sole that made him step forward gingerly. His breath was shallow and he felt winded already; he could feel the scab covering his arrow wound had cracked open again, but he couldn't show weakness. It wasn't his way.

Naturally that was the moment Eagle tripped him with a well-placed kick that took his legs out from under him, and sent him crash-landing ass-first backward on the cabin floor, and stalked past him into the snow, shaking his head as he pulled Ginryuu out of the snow bank. His expression was exasperated. "The fuck," said Kurogane, indignantly trying to get his feet.

Eagle made a hand gesture that Kurogane was considered incredibly rude in Valerian, and pulled the door closed after him. While Kurogane struggled to get back upright - his limbs were heavy with exhaustion, and he'd done nothing, how could he be this weak? - the blond padded over to the bed, put Ginryuu back from where he'd stolen her, and retrieved Kurogane's blanket, which he threw at Kurogane with probably more force than necessary. He then folded an arm over his chest, and pointed with the other first at Kurogane, then at the bed.

The stranger's jaw was set, and there was an exasperated expression in his clear blue eyes; his eagle squawked and pushed itself off from the perch, coming to land on his shoulder with massive wing beats that blew his blond hair wildly in every direction. Its talons flexed and pierced the padding of its master's coat, and it cocked its head to one side, its wide predator's eyes fixed on Kurogane's above its hooked razor beak.

Kurogane went to bed.

Both Eagle and the eagle watched him do it, and at least there was no repeat of the 'doggy' mime this time. With his point proved and Kurogane resting - albeit grudgingly - the stranger seemed to relax a hair; he redid Kurogane's bandages, put some more rocks in the fire to warm up for the covers, and made Kurogane eat another bowl of stew before he let him alone. For his part Kurogane just glared at the blond from the bed, hating that the idiot had been right.

With this snow, though, Amaterasu's invasion plans would have to be halted anyway. Perhaps Kurogane could winter here and get back to Shirasagi for the spring and still be in time; he hoped so, because it didn't look like he'd be leaving here until he was quite well, which meant keeping Eagle and his strange bird company for a few more months.

Looked like he would be stuck with the idiot. Just his luck.

part two →

-tbc