Dragon Down (scrap)
Title: Dragon Down
Genre: Angst
Rating: T?
Characters: Seishirou, Subaru
Warnings: I don't know. I really don't.
Summary: Here there be dragons. Literally.
Word Count: 1550
Dragon Down
Seishirou saw it like a falling star, all blue and white, plummeting to the ground. There was a cry like breaking glass as it hit the trees, followed by the splintering of wood, then the forest dissolved into profound silence. It was a beautiful sight, watching the dragon fall. He'd seen it crossing the sky at night many times before-a blue-white star just out of reach. He'd seen it and… he'd wanted it. And so he'd set about making it his.
He wasted no time starting out after it.
Dragons weren't mere animals-they were magical creatures sentient enough to join in philosophical debates with humans. They were also incredibly useful, mainly as base material for spells and remedies. Add that to the fact that they couldn't be caught by ordinary means (no amount of rope or iron would hold a dragon) and they were rare almost to the point of extinction…
It made them incredibly valuable.
Seishirou didn't care so much about the money-a spellcaster of his level didn't want for material possessions.
It didn't take long to reach the spot where the creature had fallen. There were broken branches and brilliant scales littering the forest floor, like an explosion of crystal, all moonlight white and snow blue. It surprised him, the color, because rare as dragons were, white dragons were practically unheard of. There were lots of red, and not a few green and brown, and even some blue and gold if a person looked hard enough. But it took hours of searching through history books to even find so much as a mention of a pure black or white. Some people didn't believe there were white dragons at all.
But what really caught his attention wasn't any of that, because lying at the center of all that crystal, utterly naked and bound in his spell like some sort of sacrifice, was a young man. His skin was as white as the scales on which he lay, his hair black as night-absolutely beautiful. Seishirou hadn't been sure he'd turn out so well. Of course, it might've been shock giving that skin its pallor. Undoubtedly that was part of it, after what had just been done to him.
Emerald eyes, gorgeous green, were wide as Seishirou approached and knelt to check on him-wide and staring and glazed with the vestiges of trauma. Pale lips were parted, trembling between quick, brief little breaths. He was shivering too, slender limbs quaking. Still, it was to be expected.
"Well, aren't you a beauty?" Seishirou chuckled, enjoying the sight before him-that lovely body completely enveloped in the black-fire netting that was his spell. He reached out to touch, to feel smooth skin stripped free of scales, to feel the rapid rise and fall of that chest, to make sure he wasn't going to lose his prize to hyperventilation and shock after all that work catching it. But the young man jerked violently away at the contact, entire body thrashing in the grip of Seishirou's spell. He tore at the net with his fingernails, gnashed at it with his teeth. It wasn't so much an attempt to escape as the sudden start of a caged creature not yet accustomed to human touch. Soon enough he was forced to submit and still back into immobility, panting. Those emerald eyes were fixed on Seishirou this time though. Wary. Slowly, Seishirou reached out again, making sure not to move too quickly or startle the terrified thing a second time. There was still an instinctive flinching as their skin met, but much more subdued.
"It'll be alright," he assured. "I'm not going to hurt you." He felt for his spell, felt how it fitted to that body. Not too bad, he thought. For an experiment, it had worked well. The dragon probably hadn't even seen it coming-black gossamer strands of sorcery against a black sky. Humming thoughtfully, he adjusted the fit, reworking it between fingers and toes, loosening and altering bits until the fine sheen of black netting settled on the body like a second skin. The young man didn't fight him in this, remaining perfectly still the entire time except for the continual shivering that still racked pale limbs.
Once he was satisfied that the spell wouldn't restrict any movement, he pulled the trembling body into his arms, where it curled up on itself as though crippled. That was probably what it felt like too, he mused, as he ran a hand absently over one bare shoulder blade and imagined how it would have looked had it still had wings. Crippled.
"This must be quite the shock." Removing his coat, he wrapped it around shivering shoulders, knowing the next twenty-four hours would be critical in keeping his prize alive. "But you'll adjust. Given time, I think you'll come to enjoy this form. After all, I'm hardly going to let you die…" There was a harder shudder from the body in his arms at that, but ultimately the young man remained totally docile as Seishirou lifted him up and carried him home, too traumatized to fight his situation. It was a bit of a walk, the rugged mountain terrain difficult to navigate on the best of days, not helped by the burden he was holding, however light it might be. But more worrisome was the cold. The crisp, cool night air bit right through his shirt, and the scanty covering of his coat was hardly doing his catch any better. The pale legs draped over his arm were moon-kissed white by the time they made it back, the body shivering so violently he thought it might fall apart. At some point white-knuckled hands had slowly clenched down on his forearms, their grip so tight as to be almost convulsive, turning toward him as a source of heat.
Seishirou practically had to pry them off as he deposited the young man on his bed, wrapping blanket after blanket around him. Then he started a fire in the fireplace, waiting until it was good and hot before finally climbing into bed himself and pulling the half-frozen body already there into his arms, rubbing warmth back into fine fingers and dainty toes. After all the trauma, it didn't take long for emerald eyes to slide closed.
It was still dark when the young man woke up. Seishirou had been dozing on and off, pushing off the fog of drowsiness in order to check on the condition of the body beside him-pleased to see that the black-fire meshing of the spell had at last disappeared,settling just under the skin. A good sign. Still, solid shadows still smothered the room when the young man tensed-Seishirou felt it-and jerked away from him, hitting his head sharply on the far wall. Seishirou immediately reached out to help, but that thin body thrashed violently as he drew nearer. Not that it did much good-the sheets only seized up around slender legs, binding them together with shackles of silk. All Seishirou had to do was lean over, catch and pin down pale arms.
"Hush," he said, gently restraining. "Hush." But the young man only heaved harder and flailed messily in his grip, objecting sharply to the gentleness-heaved hard enough to leave bruises even in Seishirou's careful hold. But it wasn't Seishirou he was fighting-it was the walls and the barriers and the unbearable constriction of a weak, fragile body. It was the horrifying feeling of nakedness and vulnerability-white skin flayed of protective scales. He couldn't figure out why he wasn't bleeding. He should have been. All that raw skin should have been blood red. So it couldn't have been his. He would have torn through it if he could have-torn through to the bone, raking off that detestable layer of flesh with fingernails if he had to, or chewing through it with his teeth. He couldn't even stand the sight of himself.
But Seishirou held him down with patient perseverance, keeping him from hurting himself. And he couldn't stand that either. Knowing the man not only didn't intend to hurt him but wouldn't even let him end it himself, obviously intending to keep him whole and undamaged-he couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand it!
When at last he'd succeeded in tangling himself too tight to even move, when finally he realized he wouldn't even be allowed to find release on his own, he lay back, exhausted, and begged…
"Kill me." They were hopeless words-helpless words. How pitiful he felt having to plead even for his death-pitiful having been reduced to begging. Shameless tears blurred the world and he wept, cried, choked: "Kill me. Kill me!"
The man stared down at him, amber eyes… disappointed, as if to say "I thought we were past this." That look-realizing the man found all his struggles and pleas nothing more than a disappointment-despair choked him, wrapping clammy hands around his throat and squeezing tight.
"It'll get easier," Seishirou said, releasing thin wrists now that the struggle had gone out of them, but even he didn't sound sure, and anyway, there was no one listening behind those emerald eyes. They'd shut him out. And he realized the young man wasn't even going to try.
He wasn't going to try at all.
Author Note: Surprise! (Rose always manages to make me want to post something...) And look! It's not a vamp fic! It's a miracle! XD There's a long story behind this, and many failed attempts. Basically, after watching How to Train Your Dragon, I just HAD to write a real Dragon story! I mean, X was just BEGGING for it, what with all those Dragon references! But I wanted a dragon that could turn human and speak and be intelligent. Schnick and I got together and planned out 2 scenarios:
First Idea: Sei was the dragon (black and red of course), plaguing some poor village, and Subaru was a slayer, having lost his family to the creatures several months back. So when Subaru gets to the village, he offers to save the town by slaying the dragon (Sei). Except, Subaru doesn't realize Sei is THERE in human form, having become somewhat trusted by the unwitting villagers. So when Sei suggests that sacrificing the slayer to the dragon might appease it, everyone is ready to believe him over Subaru. And thus Subaru gets mobbed and sacrificed to Seishirou, probably on a very uncomfortable pole somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Sometime later, at his leisure, Seishirou returns in dragon form and carries him off. And then we had all kinds of fun scenes planned. For instance, this was my summary-script-version of one of the pieces written to Schnick as a comment:
Subaru: *shows up out of nowhere all noble* I will get rid of the dragon that plagues you!
Chief: *points* We'll sacrifice HIM next!
Subaru: *is bound and gagged to a pole erected in the middle of the nowhere* You're going to regret this when the dragon comes after you! *squirms hopelessly*
-and Subaru is carried off-
Later:
Sei: *deposits woolly thing in cave*
Su: *resigned to his fate* WHAT is THAT?
Sei: Sheep. You need to eat, right?
Su: *stares at the sheep*
Sheep: *stares back, all beady-eyed* Baaa!
Sei: What's wrong?
Su: It's... alive.
Sei: And you call yourself a dragon slayer... *flambes it alive in one breath, perfectly golden brown* There. Happy?
Su: *twitches*
And then of course there was supposed to be the scene where Sei turns human in front of Subaru and Subaru realizes it's the villager who suggested sacrificing him. XD This idea somehow never got written by either of us though. I'd still love to see it.
Second Idea: Su is the dragon, like above, except there was no clear sequence of events. I must have tried 4 times before finding a beginning I liked. Initially, in my first version, it wasn't Sei's spell that captured Su, but someone else's, and Sei simply finds him already caught:
First Attempt
There was a place on the other side of the forest where the trees thinned away into dusty stone cliffs and the sun beat down during the heat of the day. A thin stream of blue toppled over the sheer stone, pooling into aquamarine, only to topple again and disappear into the gorge below. It was there that the dragons came to sun themselves.
Seishirou had been watching them for awhile, ever since he'd found the ravine. Hidden behind the evergreen foliage at the edge of the forest, he'd watch them drift down from the sky and curl up on the warm rocks. But there was one… There was one that only came at night. With scales like fine crystal, reflecting the dusty rock perfectly, it was one of the most difficult to spot. It didn't help that it was small, only juvenile, and, after the death of its twin, prone to flightiness.
Seishirou came every night to watch crystal scales scatter as it bathed.
(Insert random connecting paragraphs here)
The night everything changed, there were foreign voices in the forest. At first it was only a vague annoyance-local villagers out hunting. Seishirou held still and waited for them to pass, as they always did, but then there was a whoosh of wings overhead, rustling the tops of the trees, and a sprinkle of crystal rain, and he realized with a surprising jolt of annoyance what the prey was.
It crashed into the trees a little ways to his right, like a shooting star hitting earth.
~~~
The second attempt was better (as you can see, I kept many of the sentences in the final), but it still had Subaru being caught by someone else's spell and Seishirou freeing him.
Second Attempt
Seishirou saw it like a falling star, all blue and white, plummeting to the ground. There was a cry like breaking glass as it hit the trees, followed by the splintering of wood, then the forest dissolved into profound silence. It was a beautiful sight, watching the dragon fall.
He wasted no time starting out after it.
Dragons weren't mere animals-they were magical creatures that could as easily roam the woods on two feet as soar through the sky. They were also incredibly useful, mainly as base material for spells and remedies. Add that to the fact that they couldn't be caught by ordinary means (no amount of rope or iron would hold a dragon) and they were rare almost to the point of extinction…
It made them incredibly valuable.
Seishirou didn't care so much about the money-that had never been a problem for him. No, he was far more interested in the spells. Spells written in dragon's blood would be nastily effective. But the monetary side of it wouldn't hurt either.
It didn't take long to reach the spot where the creature had fallen. There were broken branches and brilliant scales littering the forest floor, like an explosion of crystal, all moonlight white and snow blue. It surprised him, the color, because rare as dragons were, white dragons were practically unheard of. There were lots of red, and not a few green and brown, and even some blue and gold if a person looked hard enough. But it took hours of searching through history books to even find so much as a mention of a pure black or white. Some people didn't believe there were white dragons at all.
But what really caught his attention wasn't any of that, because lying at the center of all that crystal, utterly naked and bound in cords of silver fire like some sort of sacrifice, was a young man. His skin was as white as the scales on which he lay, his hair black as night. He tore at the net with his fingernails, gnashed at it with his teeth, but Seishirou knew it was hopeless with one glance-it was a nasty bit of spell work entangling him. No knife was going to sever those cords. Then the young man looked up at him, struggles struck into instant stillness as he caught sight of Seishirou, and the eyes turned his direction were green. Emerald green.
"Well, aren't you a beauty?" Seishirou chuckled, enjoying the sight before him. He stepped closer, crouching to examine the ribbons of silver fire better, and the young man watched him warily, emerald eyes fixed. Upon closer inspection, the spell was an intricate cast, not the kind usually found in stores. The weaving was too complex to be anything less than specially crafted. Seishirou was impressed. Someone had paid dearly for that.
Still, it was no match for him.
"I don't suppose you'd come with me if I got you out of this?" He tugged at the silver-fire cords and nearly got his fingers bitten off for his trouble. "No, I didn't think so. Well, the hard way then." The young man never had the chance to be surprised. Seishirou reached out and caught the cords, jerking them around with a sharp yank so that the other man was flipped face-down and pressed hard to the bed of brilliant scales below.
~~~
There are some really bad lines in that. XD Anyway, I still didn't like this. It didn't feel... bad enough to me. It didn't emotionally involve me. It wasn't until I was sitting there pondering where to go next that the right idea finally struck me. Nix Su getting caught by some random person-it was so much worse the thought of Su curled naked on a bed of the very scales that had been ripped from his skin, shocked and traumatized and forced into a form he hates. It was such a beautiful image in my mind! Plus, it got rid of Sei being too kind again. I also really liked this idea for Subaru being 24. In the following scenes (the ones I didn't manage to write), I had something of a loose plan, in which Su (who fully believes himself to be in something like a living hell) just refuses to eat or move or respond to Sei in any fashion. He’s not intentionally trying to kill himself, he just… doesn’t try. Sei has to sort of find a reason to get him to want to live. As one of the master spellcasters, Sei gets all sorts of strange people looking to buy spells from him, and it’s a little girl's pain that finally jolts Subaru out of his own. Su ends up letting Sei use his blood to write the spell in order to help, and afterward he finally eats something. Of course, it's not until the very end that Subaru gives Sei his name. Sei has to work for the honor. ^_~
Random lines from nonexistent scenes:
1. Subaru would sit for hours just staring up at the sky with such an expression of longing that Seishirou almost felt jealous.
2. (from idea 1: after being taken away by Sei, Su falls asleep where he thinks he's out of reach...) Seishirou waited very patiently until Subaru could no longer keep his eyes open and fell asleep. Then he pulled the young man from the crags, carefully snagging his black shirt with a single claw, and deposited the prone body at his side, where he could keep it warm. Stretching one midnight-black wing over the crumpled young man in satisfaction, he finally allowed himself to sleep as well.
Genre: Angst
Rating: T?
Characters: Seishirou, Subaru
Warnings: I don't know. I really don't.
Summary: Here there be dragons. Literally.
Word Count: 1550
Dragon Down
Seishirou saw it like a falling star, all blue and white, plummeting to the ground. There was a cry like breaking glass as it hit the trees, followed by the splintering of wood, then the forest dissolved into profound silence. It was a beautiful sight, watching the dragon fall. He'd seen it crossing the sky at night many times before-a blue-white star just out of reach. He'd seen it and… he'd wanted it. And so he'd set about making it his.
He wasted no time starting out after it.
Dragons weren't mere animals-they were magical creatures sentient enough to join in philosophical debates with humans. They were also incredibly useful, mainly as base material for spells and remedies. Add that to the fact that they couldn't be caught by ordinary means (no amount of rope or iron would hold a dragon) and they were rare almost to the point of extinction…
It made them incredibly valuable.
Seishirou didn't care so much about the money-a spellcaster of his level didn't want for material possessions.
It didn't take long to reach the spot where the creature had fallen. There were broken branches and brilliant scales littering the forest floor, like an explosion of crystal, all moonlight white and snow blue. It surprised him, the color, because rare as dragons were, white dragons were practically unheard of. There were lots of red, and not a few green and brown, and even some blue and gold if a person looked hard enough. But it took hours of searching through history books to even find so much as a mention of a pure black or white. Some people didn't believe there were white dragons at all.
But what really caught his attention wasn't any of that, because lying at the center of all that crystal, utterly naked and bound in his spell like some sort of sacrifice, was a young man. His skin was as white as the scales on which he lay, his hair black as night-absolutely beautiful. Seishirou hadn't been sure he'd turn out so well. Of course, it might've been shock giving that skin its pallor. Undoubtedly that was part of it, after what had just been done to him.
Emerald eyes, gorgeous green, were wide as Seishirou approached and knelt to check on him-wide and staring and glazed with the vestiges of trauma. Pale lips were parted, trembling between quick, brief little breaths. He was shivering too, slender limbs quaking. Still, it was to be expected.
"Well, aren't you a beauty?" Seishirou chuckled, enjoying the sight before him-that lovely body completely enveloped in the black-fire netting that was his spell. He reached out to touch, to feel smooth skin stripped free of scales, to feel the rapid rise and fall of that chest, to make sure he wasn't going to lose his prize to hyperventilation and shock after all that work catching it. But the young man jerked violently away at the contact, entire body thrashing in the grip of Seishirou's spell. He tore at the net with his fingernails, gnashed at it with his teeth. It wasn't so much an attempt to escape as the sudden start of a caged creature not yet accustomed to human touch. Soon enough he was forced to submit and still back into immobility, panting. Those emerald eyes were fixed on Seishirou this time though. Wary. Slowly, Seishirou reached out again, making sure not to move too quickly or startle the terrified thing a second time. There was still an instinctive flinching as their skin met, but much more subdued.
"It'll be alright," he assured. "I'm not going to hurt you." He felt for his spell, felt how it fitted to that body. Not too bad, he thought. For an experiment, it had worked well. The dragon probably hadn't even seen it coming-black gossamer strands of sorcery against a black sky. Humming thoughtfully, he adjusted the fit, reworking it between fingers and toes, loosening and altering bits until the fine sheen of black netting settled on the body like a second skin. The young man didn't fight him in this, remaining perfectly still the entire time except for the continual shivering that still racked pale limbs.
Once he was satisfied that the spell wouldn't restrict any movement, he pulled the trembling body into his arms, where it curled up on itself as though crippled. That was probably what it felt like too, he mused, as he ran a hand absently over one bare shoulder blade and imagined how it would have looked had it still had wings. Crippled.
"This must be quite the shock." Removing his coat, he wrapped it around shivering shoulders, knowing the next twenty-four hours would be critical in keeping his prize alive. "But you'll adjust. Given time, I think you'll come to enjoy this form. After all, I'm hardly going to let you die…" There was a harder shudder from the body in his arms at that, but ultimately the young man remained totally docile as Seishirou lifted him up and carried him home, too traumatized to fight his situation. It was a bit of a walk, the rugged mountain terrain difficult to navigate on the best of days, not helped by the burden he was holding, however light it might be. But more worrisome was the cold. The crisp, cool night air bit right through his shirt, and the scanty covering of his coat was hardly doing his catch any better. The pale legs draped over his arm were moon-kissed white by the time they made it back, the body shivering so violently he thought it might fall apart. At some point white-knuckled hands had slowly clenched down on his forearms, their grip so tight as to be almost convulsive, turning toward him as a source of heat.
Seishirou practically had to pry them off as he deposited the young man on his bed, wrapping blanket after blanket around him. Then he started a fire in the fireplace, waiting until it was good and hot before finally climbing into bed himself and pulling the half-frozen body already there into his arms, rubbing warmth back into fine fingers and dainty toes. After all the trauma, it didn't take long for emerald eyes to slide closed.
It was still dark when the young man woke up. Seishirou had been dozing on and off, pushing off the fog of drowsiness in order to check on the condition of the body beside him-pleased to see that the black-fire meshing of the spell had at last disappeared,settling just under the skin. A good sign. Still, solid shadows still smothered the room when the young man tensed-Seishirou felt it-and jerked away from him, hitting his head sharply on the far wall. Seishirou immediately reached out to help, but that thin body thrashed violently as he drew nearer. Not that it did much good-the sheets only seized up around slender legs, binding them together with shackles of silk. All Seishirou had to do was lean over, catch and pin down pale arms.
"Hush," he said, gently restraining. "Hush." But the young man only heaved harder and flailed messily in his grip, objecting sharply to the gentleness-heaved hard enough to leave bruises even in Seishirou's careful hold. But it wasn't Seishirou he was fighting-it was the walls and the barriers and the unbearable constriction of a weak, fragile body. It was the horrifying feeling of nakedness and vulnerability-white skin flayed of protective scales. He couldn't figure out why he wasn't bleeding. He should have been. All that raw skin should have been blood red. So it couldn't have been his. He would have torn through it if he could have-torn through to the bone, raking off that detestable layer of flesh with fingernails if he had to, or chewing through it with his teeth. He couldn't even stand the sight of himself.
But Seishirou held him down with patient perseverance, keeping him from hurting himself. And he couldn't stand that either. Knowing the man not only didn't intend to hurt him but wouldn't even let him end it himself, obviously intending to keep him whole and undamaged-he couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand it!
When at last he'd succeeded in tangling himself too tight to even move, when finally he realized he wouldn't even be allowed to find release on his own, he lay back, exhausted, and begged…
"Kill me." They were hopeless words-helpless words. How pitiful he felt having to plead even for his death-pitiful having been reduced to begging. Shameless tears blurred the world and he wept, cried, choked: "Kill me. Kill me!"
The man stared down at him, amber eyes… disappointed, as if to say "I thought we were past this." That look-realizing the man found all his struggles and pleas nothing more than a disappointment-despair choked him, wrapping clammy hands around his throat and squeezing tight.
"It'll get easier," Seishirou said, releasing thin wrists now that the struggle had gone out of them, but even he didn't sound sure, and anyway, there was no one listening behind those emerald eyes. They'd shut him out. And he realized the young man wasn't even going to try.
He wasn't going to try at all.
Author Note: Surprise! (Rose always manages to make me want to post something...) And look! It's not a vamp fic! It's a miracle! XD There's a long story behind this, and many failed attempts. Basically, after watching How to Train Your Dragon, I just HAD to write a real Dragon story! I mean, X was just BEGGING for it, what with all those Dragon references! But I wanted a dragon that could turn human and speak and be intelligent. Schnick and I got together and planned out 2 scenarios:
First Idea: Sei was the dragon (black and red of course), plaguing some poor village, and Subaru was a slayer, having lost his family to the creatures several months back. So when Subaru gets to the village, he offers to save the town by slaying the dragon (Sei). Except, Subaru doesn't realize Sei is THERE in human form, having become somewhat trusted by the unwitting villagers. So when Sei suggests that sacrificing the slayer to the dragon might appease it, everyone is ready to believe him over Subaru. And thus Subaru gets mobbed and sacrificed to Seishirou, probably on a very uncomfortable pole somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Sometime later, at his leisure, Seishirou returns in dragon form and carries him off. And then we had all kinds of fun scenes planned. For instance, this was my summary-script-version of one of the pieces written to Schnick as a comment:
Subaru: *shows up out of nowhere all noble* I will get rid of the dragon that plagues you!
Chief: *points* We'll sacrifice HIM next!
Subaru: *is bound and gagged to a pole erected in the middle of the nowhere* You're going to regret this when the dragon comes after you! *squirms hopelessly*
-and Subaru is carried off-
Later:
Sei: *deposits woolly thing in cave*
Su: *resigned to his fate* WHAT is THAT?
Sei: Sheep. You need to eat, right?
Su: *stares at the sheep*
Sheep: *stares back, all beady-eyed* Baaa!
Sei: What's wrong?
Su: It's... alive.
Sei: And you call yourself a dragon slayer... *flambes it alive in one breath, perfectly golden brown* There. Happy?
Su: *twitches*
And then of course there was supposed to be the scene where Sei turns human in front of Subaru and Subaru realizes it's the villager who suggested sacrificing him. XD This idea somehow never got written by either of us though. I'd still love to see it.
Second Idea: Su is the dragon, like above, except there was no clear sequence of events. I must have tried 4 times before finding a beginning I liked. Initially, in my first version, it wasn't Sei's spell that captured Su, but someone else's, and Sei simply finds him already caught:
First Attempt
There was a place on the other side of the forest where the trees thinned away into dusty stone cliffs and the sun beat down during the heat of the day. A thin stream of blue toppled over the sheer stone, pooling into aquamarine, only to topple again and disappear into the gorge below. It was there that the dragons came to sun themselves.
Seishirou had been watching them for awhile, ever since he'd found the ravine. Hidden behind the evergreen foliage at the edge of the forest, he'd watch them drift down from the sky and curl up on the warm rocks. But there was one… There was one that only came at night. With scales like fine crystal, reflecting the dusty rock perfectly, it was one of the most difficult to spot. It didn't help that it was small, only juvenile, and, after the death of its twin, prone to flightiness.
Seishirou came every night to watch crystal scales scatter as it bathed.
(Insert random connecting paragraphs here)
The night everything changed, there were foreign voices in the forest. At first it was only a vague annoyance-local villagers out hunting. Seishirou held still and waited for them to pass, as they always did, but then there was a whoosh of wings overhead, rustling the tops of the trees, and a sprinkle of crystal rain, and he realized with a surprising jolt of annoyance what the prey was.
It crashed into the trees a little ways to his right, like a shooting star hitting earth.
~~~
The second attempt was better (as you can see, I kept many of the sentences in the final), but it still had Subaru being caught by someone else's spell and Seishirou freeing him.
Second Attempt
Seishirou saw it like a falling star, all blue and white, plummeting to the ground. There was a cry like breaking glass as it hit the trees, followed by the splintering of wood, then the forest dissolved into profound silence. It was a beautiful sight, watching the dragon fall.
He wasted no time starting out after it.
Dragons weren't mere animals-they were magical creatures that could as easily roam the woods on two feet as soar through the sky. They were also incredibly useful, mainly as base material for spells and remedies. Add that to the fact that they couldn't be caught by ordinary means (no amount of rope or iron would hold a dragon) and they were rare almost to the point of extinction…
It made them incredibly valuable.
Seishirou didn't care so much about the money-that had never been a problem for him. No, he was far more interested in the spells. Spells written in dragon's blood would be nastily effective. But the monetary side of it wouldn't hurt either.
It didn't take long to reach the spot where the creature had fallen. There were broken branches and brilliant scales littering the forest floor, like an explosion of crystal, all moonlight white and snow blue. It surprised him, the color, because rare as dragons were, white dragons were practically unheard of. There were lots of red, and not a few green and brown, and even some blue and gold if a person looked hard enough. But it took hours of searching through history books to even find so much as a mention of a pure black or white. Some people didn't believe there were white dragons at all.
But what really caught his attention wasn't any of that, because lying at the center of all that crystal, utterly naked and bound in cords of silver fire like some sort of sacrifice, was a young man. His skin was as white as the scales on which he lay, his hair black as night. He tore at the net with his fingernails, gnashed at it with his teeth, but Seishirou knew it was hopeless with one glance-it was a nasty bit of spell work entangling him. No knife was going to sever those cords. Then the young man looked up at him, struggles struck into instant stillness as he caught sight of Seishirou, and the eyes turned his direction were green. Emerald green.
"Well, aren't you a beauty?" Seishirou chuckled, enjoying the sight before him. He stepped closer, crouching to examine the ribbons of silver fire better, and the young man watched him warily, emerald eyes fixed. Upon closer inspection, the spell was an intricate cast, not the kind usually found in stores. The weaving was too complex to be anything less than specially crafted. Seishirou was impressed. Someone had paid dearly for that.
Still, it was no match for him.
"I don't suppose you'd come with me if I got you out of this?" He tugged at the silver-fire cords and nearly got his fingers bitten off for his trouble. "No, I didn't think so. Well, the hard way then." The young man never had the chance to be surprised. Seishirou reached out and caught the cords, jerking them around with a sharp yank so that the other man was flipped face-down and pressed hard to the bed of brilliant scales below.
~~~
There are some really bad lines in that. XD Anyway, I still didn't like this. It didn't feel... bad enough to me. It didn't emotionally involve me. It wasn't until I was sitting there pondering where to go next that the right idea finally struck me. Nix Su getting caught by some random person-it was so much worse the thought of Su curled naked on a bed of the very scales that had been ripped from his skin, shocked and traumatized and forced into a form he hates. It was such a beautiful image in my mind! Plus, it got rid of Sei being too kind again. I also really liked this idea for Subaru being 24. In the following scenes (the ones I didn't manage to write), I had something of a loose plan, in which Su (who fully believes himself to be in something like a living hell) just refuses to eat or move or respond to Sei in any fashion. He’s not intentionally trying to kill himself, he just… doesn’t try. Sei has to sort of find a reason to get him to want to live. As one of the master spellcasters, Sei gets all sorts of strange people looking to buy spells from him, and it’s a little girl's pain that finally jolts Subaru out of his own. Su ends up letting Sei use his blood to write the spell in order to help, and afterward he finally eats something. Of course, it's not until the very end that Subaru gives Sei his name. Sei has to work for the honor. ^_~
Random lines from nonexistent scenes:
1. Subaru would sit for hours just staring up at the sky with such an expression of longing that Seishirou almost felt jealous.
2. (from idea 1: after being taken away by Sei, Su falls asleep where he thinks he's out of reach...) Seishirou waited very patiently until Subaru could no longer keep his eyes open and fell asleep. Then he pulled the young man from the crags, carefully snagging his black shirt with a single claw, and deposited the prone body at his side, where he could keep it warm. Stretching one midnight-black wing over the crumpled young man in satisfaction, he finally allowed himself to sleep as well.