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Yu Yu Hakusho, Shiori + Kurama, her little gardening prodigy
Before Shuichi started smiling at her, before the accident scarring her arms that broke whatever walls between them, Shiori worried that there was something wrong with her son. He never reacted the way a child was supposed to and the doctors she had consulted had hinted, some more gently than others, that her son might have a developmental or pr personality disorder. She’d worried before the accident that they were right. One thing had given her hope before Shuichi opened up to her and that was gardening.
Shiori had never been good at gardening. Her plants withered from her absentmindedness or over care, or else they grew yet never flourished. Still, she had always loved flowers, so when Shuichi was a young child she had taken him outside with her while she tried to coax life into the ground and tried to keep her seedlings alive long enough to bloom.
The first time she saw Shuichi smile; it was directed at the rosebush she was planting with its tiny red blossoms no bigger than his closed fist. If she was the superstitious type, she would have said that his smile gave the plant the will to live because while the other two bushes she planted were dead within the month, that one had lived and thrived.
By the time Shuichi could crawl he always accompanied her into the garden when she worked and would be with her with his hands in the dirt, his chubby toddler face set in a serious line like he wasn’t playing at all. Things that he touched lived longer than the ones Shiori planted, and plants he tended grew up healthy and strong. Shuichi only ever smiled at the flowers or frowned at the weeds, but it was emotion and expression and even if it wasn’t directed at her it was better than the blank stare he gave everything else in life. It kept alive the hope that one day he’d smile at her and that there wasn’t anything wrong after all.
The doctors felt that connections with plants hardly discounted personality disorders. But then the accident happened, and Shuichi started responding and the doctor visits faded into the background, and eventually stopped happening altogether.
The garden today was more beautiful than any landscaped garden she had visited. Shuichi cared for it after school, just a few hours every day, but he coaxed miracles from the soil that no one else seemed to be capable of. The flowers bloomed larger and longer and the green of leaves were deeper than the trees next door. Shuichi had the green thumb that Shiori didn’t and then some. Part of her wondered if he would pursue that talent and make it into a livelihood, but they never talked about it or acknowledged that their yard grew lusher than anywhere in a thirty mile radius. She thought he might go into business because that was what he thought was expected of him and what her new husband mentioned most often. Shiori hoped he would pursue something he enjoyed.
As Shuichi cut flowers to put in the alcove in the entrance hall, he smiled like he smiled at her now. Soft and warm just like that first smile directed at the rose bush. He cut roses off that bush to add to the arrangement, a bold splash of red among softer yellows and pinks. Shiori poured a glass of iced juice for when he returned inside and set out the vase she knew he had in mind for the flowers.
Any Video Game Fandom, any, collect ALL the loot!
There were days when Sora wondered where all the treasures he found came from. Who put the chests out? Who filled them? Were they forgotten when the Heartless swarmed the world, or were their owners still out there? More troubling, where did the Heartless get munny or synthesis items or potions?
He had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer if he got it. Heartless hadn’t always been heartless after all.
But as he traveled, Sora couldn’t help unlocking every chest he came across and taking its contents. It wasn’t like if someone really meant to use that raw orichalcum, right? If they had, it wouldn’t have been in a chest in some alleyway. Besides, keyblade master saving the worlds; no one could get too mad at him for using it for the greater good. And sometimes chests held maps. Clearly he had to check all of them in case one had something useful. (He just would take its contents anyway. If he didn’t someone else would.)
It wasn’t really stealing. No one ever complained. And considering the layer of dust on some of them… Well, Beast wouldn’t mind Sora taking the chests’ contents. Clearly he hadn’t looked in them in a decade anyway.
Ok, maybe it kind of was stealing.
But some of those chests had held puppies.
Wouldn’t Donald and Goofy say something?
Half the worlds were overrun by heartless anyway.
Okay, no, Sora wasn’t really convincing himself, but he’d check all the chests and take what was in them, stealing or not. Orichalcum plusses didn’t fall from the sky and they were kind of necessary to get the best weapons. If they all lived through all the battles, maybe he’d feel a little guilty. Possibly. After the world was back in order and the chests’ owners started looking for their contents. But how could he feel guilty now when the high potion he unlocked ten minutes ago saved his life now? Or when he opened a chest and found torn pages from Pooh’s storybook and could help his friend regain more of his memories? So no, Sora didn’t feel too guilty. And if he was a little obsessive in searching all the chests he could find out? Well, he never knew what might come in handy.
fairy tales, any peasant, princess, or nobleman's daughter, she is the dragon
The tales always had the same end; slay the beast, rescue the girl, get the reward. Daria had read the stories over and over and over and so she knew what to expect. In fact she’d read the book so many times her claws had sliced through the pages and her breath had warped the spine. Without fail, the hero slays the beast. She closed one of the four precious books she had and tried not to feel too upset at the tatters it had become. It was hardly her fault she no longer had fingers and thumbs to work with. It went on the high shelf she would never have been able to reach a year ago, up above the charred and battered remains of what had once been a bed before she ruined it in a despair-fueled tantrum. Back when she first had hopes of changing back and they shattered into a thousand pieces as days became months became more than a year.
A year put a lot of things into perspective. And a year was enough for Daria to be sure that life wasn’t quite as simple as she had assumed.
The spell had specified true love as its cure, like all storybook tales. Daria wasn’t sure who would love her as she was. She wasn’t sure if anyone would look past the dragon and see the woman behind it. it didn’t help that she’d left her prison in ruins between tantrums and the inevitable wreckage of getting used to a new body.
For now, no one had come. For now, someone left food. For now, no one knew that the princess in the tower was a dragon. But that couldn’t last forever.
Daria paced the room, and if she didn’t think about it, having four legs instead of two and having a long, whip-like tail felt completely natural. She almost never tripped anymore. She could leap to the top or the stairs in two bounds and could climb the stone walls if she gripped the stones tight with her claws and kept her body very flat.
Waiting, waiting, waiting, all she did was waiting. Smoke puffed from her nostrils at the thoughts as the fire sack in her belly trembled with the shift of emotions. She’d set things on fire by accident before when boredom became despair became anger.
She didn’t set things on fire quite so often now.
Not for the first time, Daria stuck her head out the window and looked down the tower. At the bottom of the tower was a door. It was big enough for a man to walk through, and to cart in the quarters of cow carcasses that made up her meals, but not large enough for her to walk out. The window was wider, built to give the best view possible as if that would make being stuck in a tower better. She’d tried climbing down a few times, but she never got far before the fear of the drop drove her back inside. She never hated the sorcerer that cursed her more than when she realized she wasn’t even a proper dragon since she didn’t have wings. If she had wings, she’d fly away and find some way to break the curse that wasn’t waiting for love or death. Or maybe, just maybe, she’d try being the dragon she was supposed to be.
She rather doubted she’d be a good one. Daria’s scales were a red a few shades darker than terracotta pots that didn’t fit in with the greens of the forests and gray mountain rocks.
Flames flickered past her muzzle as she sighed. They were ticklishly warm even as they scorched the gray stone beneath the window black.
The curse, as many curses tended to be, was time sensitive. There were four years for a knight or prince to come. There were four years to hope that one of them would be someone she would love and who would love her in return. But mostly there were four years of wondering whether someone would show up and try to kill her, and that wasn’t very encouraging at all. No one had come the first year. It didn’t seem very promising to wait another year on the off chance someone did come. And who was to say her true love would be a knight or prince at all? That was just what her parents would hope for. That left only the choice of leaving in the end and hoping it would be better.
Daria withdrew her head and padded toward the opposite wall. The stone there was pitted and scored from scrape after scrape of her claws from the even floor to the wooden beams up above her head.
If she didn’t have the strength or courage to get down yet, she’d just have to keep practicing. Daria set her claws in the cracks in the mortar and climbed.
***
This was it. this was Trevor’s chance to show that he was a knight and that he would amount to something-thank you very much mother-and maybe come back with something more than he left with. (That wasn’t hard, a tiny voice said inside him. You’re not even a knight, just a lowbred squire who everyone feels shouldn’t even have made it to page.) As usual, he ignored the little voice of doubt. He wasn’t too bad off. He had his own horse, and might soon be able to afford proper armor rather than the padded cloth he made do with. Trevor swung off his horse and tied it to the hitch post-why was there a hitch post at supposedly secluded tower?-and tried the tower door. It was unlocked. There was a captive princess here, and the tower door was unlocked. Trevor was starting to wonder is there wasn’t something to the other rumors, the ones that said the princess didn’t exist and a shape-shifting witch lived here. Though that wouldn’t explain the open door.
He stepped over a leather mat on the inside of the door-why leather? Why have a door mat at all?-and up the spiral staircase. The air smelled like roasting meat. Hopefully not the meat of another rescuer. Trevor swallowed and gripped his sword.
The stairs came out on a square hole in the floor of the tower room. There was a door on the right, ajar, with a chamber pot and a cheap tin tub, and what would have been the wide open space of the tower room if it hadn’t been occupied. There was a dragon, the size of three tall men in length and at least one man in height to its shoulder with dark red-brown scales like a polished board of dark mahogany. He didn’t really notice the rest of the room. Once he noticed the dragon, it was hard to stop staring at it.
Trevor tugged his sword free, his knees shaking and mouth so dry he thought he might throw up, but the dragon was there, and the princess should be….somewhere…and…the dragon turned to look at him. He almost dropped the sword as pale brown eyes narrowed at him.
“D-dragon!” Trevor stammered. “I’ve come t-to free the princess and return her to her f-family.”
The dragon’s eyes narrowed further. For a second Trevor swore he heard something that sounded like “oh for the love of-” before it roared. The choice was cover his ears and drop the sword or stay standing and keep it. Trevor kept the sword, but his ears were ringing and his knees shaking as the roar came to an end with a hiss.
“SIT!” the dragon growled.
Trevor sat without really thinking. It was the kind of voice you didn’t question.
A young woman, scruffy, her hair cut short and dirt on her knees and elbows, both showing like a farm girl’s, peered around the dragon. “I thought we were done with surprise visitors.”
“Well apparently no one spread the word,” the dragon rumbled. Now that it was quieter it sounded more like a she dragon than a he dragon, but Trevor wasn’t willing to bet his life on it.
“P-princess?” he asked the human girl.
She laughed. “Do I look like a princess?”
“I…” Was this one of those moments his mother warned him of with women? What was the proper response?
The girl laughed again. “I’m no princess anymore than she was born a dragon,” nodding at the dragon still standing protectively in front of her. “I’m a friend.”
“Ah.” That was…actually, no, that didn’t make sense. Trevor blinked and tried not to move since the dragon’s teeth were still bared and now he was looking he could see wisps of smoke from her nostrils. “What?”
“I’m the princess,” the dragon growled. “And I don’t need rescued.”
“The time to cure the curse has passed,” the human girl said helpfully. “Your information’s about a year outdated.”
“I’m not sure why they ever bothered in the first place,” the dragon-princess?-grumbled. “No one ever knew what the curse meant. They just thought they had to slay the dragon.”
The girl patted the dragon’s shoulder. “I think we both agree this was the better outcome.”
“Well now that you’re here it is,” the dragon said. “You can turn pages of books without cutting them to ribbons.”
The girl laughed like this was a great, private joke between the two of them. Trevor wished he could melt down the stairs and ride away. Unfortunately he couldn’t feel his knees to move.
“Well, since you’re here and not going to kill the dragon-” This got him a quick, firm look. “-why don’t you join us for dinner?”
“…Excuse me?” Trevor blinked as the dragon shifted out of the way to show a makeshift table set with plain brown crockery full of two roast rabbits and roasted vegetables.
“There’s plenty to share, and you can tell us of your travels while you’re here.” The girl waved a hand at him. “Leave your sword over there though.”
And so that was how Trevor found himself dining with a princess turned dragon, a farmer’s daughter turned dragon companion, and discussing how he wasn’t actually a knight and why he was desperate enough to try fighting a dragon anyway.
Yu Yu Hakusho, Shiori + Kurama, her little gardening prodigy
Before Shuichi started smiling at her, before the accident scarring her arms that broke whatever walls between them, Shiori worried that there was something wrong with her son. He never reacted the way a child was supposed to and the doctors she had consulted had hinted, some more gently than others, that her son might have a developmental or pr personality disorder. She’d worried before the accident that they were right. One thing had given her hope before Shuichi opened up to her and that was gardening.
Shiori had never been good at gardening. Her plants withered from her absentmindedness or over care, or else they grew yet never flourished. Still, she had always loved flowers, so when Shuichi was a young child she had taken him outside with her while she tried to coax life into the ground and tried to keep her seedlings alive long enough to bloom.
The first time she saw Shuichi smile; it was directed at the rosebush she was planting with its tiny red blossoms no bigger than his closed fist. If she was the superstitious type, she would have said that his smile gave the plant the will to live because while the other two bushes she planted were dead within the month, that one had lived and thrived.
By the time Shuichi could crawl he always accompanied her into the garden when she worked and would be with her with his hands in the dirt, his chubby toddler face set in a serious line like he wasn’t playing at all. Things that he touched lived longer than the ones Shiori planted, and plants he tended grew up healthy and strong. Shuichi only ever smiled at the flowers or frowned at the weeds, but it was emotion and expression and even if it wasn’t directed at her it was better than the blank stare he gave everything else in life. It kept alive the hope that one day he’d smile at her and that there wasn’t anything wrong after all.
The doctors felt that connections with plants hardly discounted personality disorders. But then the accident happened, and Shuichi started responding and the doctor visits faded into the background, and eventually stopped happening altogether.
The garden today was more beautiful than any landscaped garden she had visited. Shuichi cared for it after school, just a few hours every day, but he coaxed miracles from the soil that no one else seemed to be capable of. The flowers bloomed larger and longer and the green of leaves were deeper than the trees next door. Shuichi had the green thumb that Shiori didn’t and then some. Part of her wondered if he would pursue that talent and make it into a livelihood, but they never talked about it or acknowledged that their yard grew lusher than anywhere in a thirty mile radius. She thought he might go into business because that was what he thought was expected of him and what her new husband mentioned most often. Shiori hoped he would pursue something he enjoyed.
As Shuichi cut flowers to put in the alcove in the entrance hall, he smiled like he smiled at her now. Soft and warm just like that first smile directed at the rose bush. He cut roses off that bush to add to the arrangement, a bold splash of red among softer yellows and pinks. Shiori poured a glass of iced juice for when he returned inside and set out the vase she knew he had in mind for the flowers.
Any Video Game Fandom, any, collect ALL the loot!
There were days when Sora wondered where all the treasures he found came from. Who put the chests out? Who filled them? Were they forgotten when the Heartless swarmed the world, or were their owners still out there? More troubling, where did the Heartless get munny or synthesis items or potions?
He had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer if he got it. Heartless hadn’t always been heartless after all.
But as he traveled, Sora couldn’t help unlocking every chest he came across and taking its contents. It wasn’t like if someone really meant to use that raw orichalcum, right? If they had, it wouldn’t have been in a chest in some alleyway. Besides, keyblade master saving the worlds; no one could get too mad at him for using it for the greater good. And sometimes chests held maps. Clearly he had to check all of them in case one had something useful. (He just would take its contents anyway. If he didn’t someone else would.)
It wasn’t really stealing. No one ever complained. And considering the layer of dust on some of them… Well, Beast wouldn’t mind Sora taking the chests’ contents. Clearly he hadn’t looked in them in a decade anyway.
Ok, maybe it kind of was stealing.
But some of those chests had held puppies.
Wouldn’t Donald and Goofy say something?
Half the worlds were overrun by heartless anyway.
Okay, no, Sora wasn’t really convincing himself, but he’d check all the chests and take what was in them, stealing or not. Orichalcum plusses didn’t fall from the sky and they were kind of necessary to get the best weapons. If they all lived through all the battles, maybe he’d feel a little guilty. Possibly. After the world was back in order and the chests’ owners started looking for their contents. But how could he feel guilty now when the high potion he unlocked ten minutes ago saved his life now? Or when he opened a chest and found torn pages from Pooh’s storybook and could help his friend regain more of his memories? So no, Sora didn’t feel too guilty. And if he was a little obsessive in searching all the chests he could find out? Well, he never knew what might come in handy.
fairy tales, any peasant, princess, or nobleman's daughter, she is the dragon
The tales always had the same end; slay the beast, rescue the girl, get the reward. Daria had read the stories over and over and over and so she knew what to expect. In fact she’d read the book so many times her claws had sliced through the pages and her breath had warped the spine. Without fail, the hero slays the beast. She closed one of the four precious books she had and tried not to feel too upset at the tatters it had become. It was hardly her fault she no longer had fingers and thumbs to work with. It went on the high shelf she would never have been able to reach a year ago, up above the charred and battered remains of what had once been a bed before she ruined it in a despair-fueled tantrum. Back when she first had hopes of changing back and they shattered into a thousand pieces as days became months became more than a year.
A year put a lot of things into perspective. And a year was enough for Daria to be sure that life wasn’t quite as simple as she had assumed.
The spell had specified true love as its cure, like all storybook tales. Daria wasn’t sure who would love her as she was. She wasn’t sure if anyone would look past the dragon and see the woman behind it. it didn’t help that she’d left her prison in ruins between tantrums and the inevitable wreckage of getting used to a new body.
For now, no one had come. For now, someone left food. For now, no one knew that the princess in the tower was a dragon. But that couldn’t last forever.
Daria paced the room, and if she didn’t think about it, having four legs instead of two and having a long, whip-like tail felt completely natural. She almost never tripped anymore. She could leap to the top or the stairs in two bounds and could climb the stone walls if she gripped the stones tight with her claws and kept her body very flat.
Waiting, waiting, waiting, all she did was waiting. Smoke puffed from her nostrils at the thoughts as the fire sack in her belly trembled with the shift of emotions. She’d set things on fire by accident before when boredom became despair became anger.
She didn’t set things on fire quite so often now.
Not for the first time, Daria stuck her head out the window and looked down the tower. At the bottom of the tower was a door. It was big enough for a man to walk through, and to cart in the quarters of cow carcasses that made up her meals, but not large enough for her to walk out. The window was wider, built to give the best view possible as if that would make being stuck in a tower better. She’d tried climbing down a few times, but she never got far before the fear of the drop drove her back inside. She never hated the sorcerer that cursed her more than when she realized she wasn’t even a proper dragon since she didn’t have wings. If she had wings, she’d fly away and find some way to break the curse that wasn’t waiting for love or death. Or maybe, just maybe, she’d try being the dragon she was supposed to be.
She rather doubted she’d be a good one. Daria’s scales were a red a few shades darker than terracotta pots that didn’t fit in with the greens of the forests and gray mountain rocks.
Flames flickered past her muzzle as she sighed. They were ticklishly warm even as they scorched the gray stone beneath the window black.
The curse, as many curses tended to be, was time sensitive. There were four years for a knight or prince to come. There were four years to hope that one of them would be someone she would love and who would love her in return. But mostly there were four years of wondering whether someone would show up and try to kill her, and that wasn’t very encouraging at all. No one had come the first year. It didn’t seem very promising to wait another year on the off chance someone did come. And who was to say her true love would be a knight or prince at all? That was just what her parents would hope for. That left only the choice of leaving in the end and hoping it would be better.
Daria withdrew her head and padded toward the opposite wall. The stone there was pitted and scored from scrape after scrape of her claws from the even floor to the wooden beams up above her head.
If she didn’t have the strength or courage to get down yet, she’d just have to keep practicing. Daria set her claws in the cracks in the mortar and climbed.
***
This was it. this was Trevor’s chance to show that he was a knight and that he would amount to something-thank you very much mother-and maybe come back with something more than he left with. (That wasn’t hard, a tiny voice said inside him. You’re not even a knight, just a lowbred squire who everyone feels shouldn’t even have made it to page.) As usual, he ignored the little voice of doubt. He wasn’t too bad off. He had his own horse, and might soon be able to afford proper armor rather than the padded cloth he made do with. Trevor swung off his horse and tied it to the hitch post-why was there a hitch post at supposedly secluded tower?-and tried the tower door. It was unlocked. There was a captive princess here, and the tower door was unlocked. Trevor was starting to wonder is there wasn’t something to the other rumors, the ones that said the princess didn’t exist and a shape-shifting witch lived here. Though that wouldn’t explain the open door.
He stepped over a leather mat on the inside of the door-why leather? Why have a door mat at all?-and up the spiral staircase. The air smelled like roasting meat. Hopefully not the meat of another rescuer. Trevor swallowed and gripped his sword.
The stairs came out on a square hole in the floor of the tower room. There was a door on the right, ajar, with a chamber pot and a cheap tin tub, and what would have been the wide open space of the tower room if it hadn’t been occupied. There was a dragon, the size of three tall men in length and at least one man in height to its shoulder with dark red-brown scales like a polished board of dark mahogany. He didn’t really notice the rest of the room. Once he noticed the dragon, it was hard to stop staring at it.
Trevor tugged his sword free, his knees shaking and mouth so dry he thought he might throw up, but the dragon was there, and the princess should be….somewhere…and…the dragon turned to look at him. He almost dropped the sword as pale brown eyes narrowed at him.
“D-dragon!” Trevor stammered. “I’ve come t-to free the princess and return her to her f-family.”
The dragon’s eyes narrowed further. For a second Trevor swore he heard something that sounded like “oh for the love of-” before it roared. The choice was cover his ears and drop the sword or stay standing and keep it. Trevor kept the sword, but his ears were ringing and his knees shaking as the roar came to an end with a hiss.
“SIT!” the dragon growled.
Trevor sat without really thinking. It was the kind of voice you didn’t question.
A young woman, scruffy, her hair cut short and dirt on her knees and elbows, both showing like a farm girl’s, peered around the dragon. “I thought we were done with surprise visitors.”
“Well apparently no one spread the word,” the dragon rumbled. Now that it was quieter it sounded more like a she dragon than a he dragon, but Trevor wasn’t willing to bet his life on it.
“P-princess?” he asked the human girl.
She laughed. “Do I look like a princess?”
“I…” Was this one of those moments his mother warned him of with women? What was the proper response?
The girl laughed again. “I’m no princess anymore than she was born a dragon,” nodding at the dragon still standing protectively in front of her. “I’m a friend.”
“Ah.” That was…actually, no, that didn’t make sense. Trevor blinked and tried not to move since the dragon’s teeth were still bared and now he was looking he could see wisps of smoke from her nostrils. “What?”
“I’m the princess,” the dragon growled. “And I don’t need rescued.”
“The time to cure the curse has passed,” the human girl said helpfully. “Your information’s about a year outdated.”
“I’m not sure why they ever bothered in the first place,” the dragon-princess?-grumbled. “No one ever knew what the curse meant. They just thought they had to slay the dragon.”
The girl patted the dragon’s shoulder. “I think we both agree this was the better outcome.”
“Well now that you’re here it is,” the dragon said. “You can turn pages of books without cutting them to ribbons.”
The girl laughed like this was a great, private joke between the two of them. Trevor wished he could melt down the stairs and ride away. Unfortunately he couldn’t feel his knees to move.
“Well, since you’re here and not going to kill the dragon-” This got him a quick, firm look. “-why don’t you join us for dinner?”
“…Excuse me?” Trevor blinked as the dragon shifted out of the way to show a makeshift table set with plain brown crockery full of two roast rabbits and roasted vegetables.
“There’s plenty to share, and you can tell us of your travels while you’re here.” The girl waved a hand at him. “Leave your sword over there though.”
And so that was how Trevor found himself dining with a princess turned dragon, a farmer’s daughter turned dragon companion, and discussing how he wasn’t actually a knight and why he was desperate enough to try fighting a dragon anyway.