H - 86: Two Warring Spirits (Patreon)

It was a quieter hour the following morning when Vanimax stepped carefully into the kitchen.

“Where is everyone?” he asked warily.

“Morning, Vanimax,” said Zhiiji, who was just finishing setting a cloth over a bowl containing chunks of meat submerged in sauce, itself perched in another bowl full of crushed ice. “I dunno, everybody scattered to their own various business after they ate. You just missed breakfast, but the leftovers are still warm if you’re hungry!”

He wrinkled his nose. “Hmf. Leftovers. No, thank you. So…what are you up to?”

“Just cleanup, and prepping for lunch. Don’t need to start most of it yet, but I gotta marinate my cutlets properly. Seriously, there’s a bacon sandwich and some taters left if—”

“Good, you’re not busy, then,” he said, finally emerging from the doorway.

Zhiiji had just picked up a soapy cloth and begun wiping down one of her carefully laid out knives, but now paused to peer at him through narrowed eyes. Not noticing her expression, Vanimax paced right past her and the Phantom Legion maid, who had just been mopping the floor.

The spectral skeleton paused, tilting her grinning skull down toward the dusty claw-marks in that section of floor, and re-mopped it.

“Lately I’ve been…conflicted,” Vanimax said, meandering over toward the opposite end of the kitchen. “About…well, quite a few different things.”

“Uh…okay?” Zhiiji went back to cleaning her knives.

“It’s just… So much has changed, and so fast. Getting rid of Atraximos was an unequivocal boon, for everyone, but… Having lived for a century with things a certain way, adjusting to everything being different is…not easy.”

“Well,” she said, “I reckon if you just keep living, you’ll get there. That’s the basic process for adjusting to things.”

“I know, but… Well, in the meantime, I keep…screwing up. In large and small ways.”

He had begun pacing up and down the narrow path through the center of the kitchen, now, seemingly not having noticed the undead maid silently following behind and scrubbing away his clawprints. Hiiri ears normally lay flat down the backs of their heads, but Zhiiji’s had begun to stiffen outward slightly in annoyance.

“Vanimax,” she said, “if the family was gonna kick you out or something I figure you kidnapping the princess was the thing that would’ve set it off. You’ll be fine.”

“Ugh, that’s another thing. Part of it,” he grumbled. “The more I think about it, the worse I feel about that. I… Well, I feel like I should apologize properly to Princess Perseverance, and maybe do something nice for her. But…what? I don’t even know what princesses like. Also, something tells me it would be better to just stay away from her. She probably doesn’t want to see me. Who would?”

“That is a good impulse, you should definitely run with that.”

“Yes, but…then everything is just left how it is. A wrong I don’t know how to make right.”

He paused, flipping up one corner of the cloth over the bowl, and plucked out a few chunks of raw meat, popping them into his mouth, then resumed pacing.

Zhiiji halted mid-scrub, looking sidelong at her marinade through one slitted eye. Slowly, her tail bristled up to its fullest possible extent.

“Vanimax,” she said in a tightly controlled tone, “what exactly are you doing in here?”

“Asking your advice, obviously,” he replied while chewing and continuing to pace. “You’re smart, you’ve been to a lot of different cultures and understand people.”

Zhiiji sighed softly, hopped down from her stool and crossed to the storage box, from which she extracted another raw cutlet.

“You know who’s good with this stuff?” she said pointedly while quickly slicing the meat with the knife and cutting board she had just washed. “Kaln. That man is people skills incarnate, and also the boss around here. He knows all the personalities involved way better than I do.”

“Well, I can hardly go to him, now can I?” Vanimax growled, lashing his tail. He did not seem to notice that it impacted the bucket of mop water; fortunately the maid could effectively teleport, flashing across the kitchen in a puff of mist and catching it before it toppled while the dragon carried blithely on. “Kaln is…probably the most conflicting thing in this place. Don’t get me wrong, I like Kaln—he makes it sort of hard not to. But he’s right at the center of…of everything, and aside from how…fraught that is by itself… I mean, my father was an imbecile on top of being a monster so I try not to take his opinions too seriously, but I am still a dragon, and when it comes to that, he…exaggerated more than made things up from whole cloth. It feels…strange, not quite natural, to have to acknowledge a human as my superior. It’s a hard thing to come to grips with.”

Zhiiji finished adding cuts of meat to the marinade, and then moved the bowl out of his easy reach as he passed by again. The maid was still right on his heels with the mop, even though the dust had worn off his claws by now.

She liked Spooky.

“Sounds like something your mother would be better qualified to walk you through,” she said aloud, turning back to the wash basin to re-clean her tools.

Vanimax heaved a sigh, finally coming to a stop at the kitchen door where his pacing had started. Turning around to find the maid right behind him, he impatiently waved a claw at her as if wafting away a puff of smoke.

Spooky came to attention with her mop and saluted, and only then dematerialized and drifted out of his way.

“It’s not that you’re wrong,” the young dragon grumbled. “Izayaroa is the wisest person I know by a wide margin. But even she has her blind spots, and I occupy…several of them. I know well how she sees me and what she would advise. And it isn’t wrong, but it isn’t…complete. Not to mention being nothing I haven’t heard. Worse, if I even start asking her about such things the result will be a conversation that never ends. I’d like to be able to do something else with my time at some point this decade, you know?”

“Yeah,” Zhiiji agreed, “it sure is annoying when people come pestering you with weird conversations when you’re trying to do something. Or so I hear.”

“Well, I assure you, it is,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “You’ll have to take my word for it.”

Zhiiji wiped down her re-washed knife with excessive care.

“Anyway,” Vanimax prompted after a moment of silence, “what do you think?”

“About?”

“My problem!” he exclaimed, spreading his arms. “The whole—haven’t you been listening?”

Zhiiji hopped down from her stool, stepped over to the preservation box, pulled open the door, and retrieved the item she had placed conveniently at the front of the bottom shelf minutes before. Only then did she turn and pad over to stand in front of Vanimax.

“Son,” she said, “inside you there are two warring spirits.”

Vanimax nodded earnestly, his eyes fixed intently upon hers in an almost eager expression.

“So,” she said, reaching up to press the bacon sandwich into his claws, “congrats on the threesome. Get outta my kitchen.”

***

Kaln grimaced, rolling his right shoulder and rubbing it with his opposite hand. “I think… I feel like I am not making much progress today.”

“Progress in the course of one day, let alone one session, is not really how this works,” Tiavathyris replied, tilting her head and regarding him with that gently non-judgmental expression which was part of what made her a good teacher. “But I don’t disagree, husband. You’re distracted today.”

He repressed a wince. “I, ah, apologize. I don’t mean to waste your time.”

“I have plenty of it, and nowhere better to spend it than on you,” she said with a warm little smile. “I was expressing concern, Kaln, not complaint. Even though I know you take little joy in the martial arts, your love of learning has made you an attentive student thus far. Your mind is elsewhere, today, and it makes me wonder if you are quite all right.”

“Oh, now, how could I not be?” he answered, a winning smile sliding onto his own face. “The worst day in your presence is a finer experience than the best at a rejuvenating spa. One can hardly help being distracted in the presence of such beauty.”

Her eyebrows drew together, and one lifted. He’d never actually seen that combination of facial muscles used before, but it made for one of the most devastatingly communicative expressions he’d ever seen.

“I—no—augh, sorry.” Kaln sighed and shook his head, looking away. “I think you’re right, I am off today. As soon as I’m not paying attention it slips right out again. I apologize, Tiavathyris. I know you dislike such…conversational games.”

“Kaln,” she said in a layered tone that nearly made him flinch. It was at once cautious and slightly reproachful, and even this faintest hint of rejection caused a spike of panic to stab through him which he tried his best to fight back. It wasn’t quite as bad as the overreaction he’d had to Izayaroa’s apology, but Kaln still had to remind himself his relationships were not as fragile as his recent history of betrayal left him inclined to fear.

Tiavathyris, though, accompanied her gentle reproof with an equally gentle smile, stepping up to him and sliding an arm around his shoulder. With one claw she skillfully began kneading at the spot where he’d picked up a twinge in the last few minutes, somehow managing to do this without scratching his skin.

“I fear I have given you the wrong impression,” she said, leaning down to rest her temple against the top of his head. “I certainly haven’t lived this long without learning to appreciate a gifted communicator. Conversation and interaction become a game for you—something at which you are very skilled, and in which you take great joy. I’d never want to deprive you of that, husband; if you had no other outlet for it I would happily indulge you.”

He felt her drawing on magic, and one of the decorative panels lining the structures into which she’d shaped her lair shifted aside. A bench emerged from it, sliding across the floor to come to rest right behind them. Tiavathyris sat down, gently pulling him down alongside her.

“But,” she continued, “you don’t need that from me. Izayaroa also loves this game, and so it becomes something the two of you can share. Emeralaphine has spent her long years disdaining such games and is thus woefully helpless at them, so you handle her as deftly as a child with a toy. I would worry about that, except that I have seen how assiduously you leverage this advantage only to improve her happiness.”

She stroked his back with one claw, still leaning against him.

“I don’t dislike flirting, Kaln, only insincerity. Even so, it’s not about what I don’t want, but what I do. I wish to be the one with whom you can simply be open. I would hear your cares, unfiltered and true, and know that you feel safe enough with me to bare yourself this way. Letting go of artifice, armament, and control, so we can simply be each other, with each other.” Tiavathyris shifted her head to nuzzle at his temple for a moment. “I have not pressed you on this because it is something that takes time. Intimacy doesn’t just manifest as an act of will. I’m sure we will get there, and I don’t mean to rush you. I only say it now, husband, to let you know that if something is troubling you, there is no need for you to keep it to yourself.”

She pulled back enough to look him in the eyes, and inclined her head once.

“If you don’t feel ready yet, that’s all right. I don’t mean to rush you. But if there is any chance that you do, Kaln, I am here, and ready to listen.”

Kaln suddenly realized he’d been breathing rather shallowly—so much so that he now had to draw in a deeper breath, and found that it shuddered awkwardly coming in. And then he had to clear his throat. Listening to her had conjured up a lump that definitely hadn’t been there a moment before.

It was…something he had to think about. Not for long, but he did: on the one hand was his instinctive aversion to revealing information that could make him vulnerable, and on the other, his desire to build exactly the kind of trust with Tiavathyris that she was talking about. Once he actually thought about it, consciously, it was obvious that both hands were just emotional impulses, and just as obvious which one was actually in line with his goals for this family.

“I am… I have been… Terrified,” he confessed quietly. Kaln found himself looking down at his hands, found them clenched in his lap in a closed-off body language that felt out of character for him. Tiavathyris simply continued rubbing his back in long, even strokes, listening. “Ever since I got back from the desert—well, no, actually, since my conversation with Hii-Amat. Not that anything is her fault! Just the opposite: she gave me some very important advice, made me think about something I’d been avoiding thinking about, and well…thinking is always better than not thinking. Right?”

“It is possible to overthink,” she murmured. “I suspect you may be discovering that now, husband. But as a rule, yes, I quite agree with you.”

“I haven’t been…facing it,” Kaln admitted. “Actually… Wow, I think I’ve been handling this about as wrongly as it’s possible to. I only just now realize how much I’ve been avoiding thinking about it, until you…made me. Hells, that’s stupid, I can’t afford to be ruled by emotions like that. Looking back, I’ve just been dithering about ever since we got back. This was supposed to be the first time I was finally safe, with nothing looming over me, so I could enjoy getting closer with all of you. And I haven’t been doing that at all, have I? Even Zhiiji commented on it last night. Gods.”

“What is it that frightens you, husband?” she asked softly, still caressing him.

Kaln indulged in another steadying breath, and then deliberately leaned against her. “I… Well. In a word, power. In the future—probably the pretty near future—I’m not going to just be Kaln, who lives peacefully with his family. I never will be again. We always knew this was going to escalate to me being a god of dragons, with everything that entails, but… How many weeks do we even have left until the Valefolk realize Atraximos is gone and start making moves at us? I am going to have to leverage the forces under my control to exert my will on other people. Lots of other people. I hadn’t really thought about what that means until Hii-Amat spelled it out for me, but now… Tiavathyris, I’m going to mess everything up. I simply don’t have the skills or experience for this—for leadership, for rule. I wasn’t trained for it. A rank amateur blundering into any job is destined for mishaps, and now? It’s not like a blotted report or a misfiled book, or even a careless word that hurts someone’s feelings and can be rectified with apologies and amends. I won’t just be a scribe, or a family man. Every mistake I make will impact people by the hundreds, the thousands…my bumbling will cost lives and ruin lives, and it’s inevitable that I’ll bumble. I just… I don’t…”

He raised his hands before himself, noticing for the first time that they were trembling. So was his breath.

“The…the weight of it,” Kaln whispered. “I don’t think I can carry it.”

Tiavathyris shifted, turning toward him and in fact draping one of her long legs across his lap. Facing him directly and leaning closer, she pulling him up against her chest and kissed him.

It was unhurried, and gentle, and warm. Kaln slowly un-tensed, finding his whole body relaxing into her as his mouth relaxed into her lips. They pressed together, softly and slowly, repeatedly, sharing their breath and the weight of the moment.

“Kaln, my love,” Tiavathyris said gently when she finally pulled back enough. Taking his face in her claws, gently brushing her thumbs over his cheeks. “Everything you fear will come to pass.”

Before he could say anything, she leaned forward, pressing her forehead to his, and continued with more intensity.

“And it will not be as bad as you fear. You are right—you will make mistakes, as new leaders always do. As anyone new at a task does. It shows wisdom that you have foreseen this, and virtue that power is the thing you fear most, and both of these will serve you well as a leader. But Kaln, you are in as advantageous a position as it is possible for a person to be. You have us—the benefit of the best counsel possible. Seek your consorts’ advice and you will be diverted from most of the common mistakes; I guarantee they are nothing we have not seen before, and anything truly novel we have the combined perspective to help you work through. You also have our power at your fingertips, and you will find that a useful resource indeed for blunting the consequences of any missteps we make. Errors will be made, yes. But fewer than almost anyone else in your position would, and with less repercussion than most.”

She nuzzled at him, angling her head to rub the bridge of her nose against his in what he’d come to interpret as a dragon’s kiss.

“And Kaln, do not take this as flattery, but I believe you are better-suited for leadership than you realize. I am confident that Izayaroa has seen the same. Your innate gifts, irrespective of any magic or divinity, lend themselves well to marshaling and directing others. You’re not going to be stumbling helplessly through disasters, husband, but growing into your own power with the best aid that can be had.”

He shifted his own grip, wrapping an arm around her neck and the other around her back, pulling himself into a hug and burying his face in her neck. Tiavathyris squeezed him close in turn, once again stroking his back with a free claw. Her tail surreptitiously twined around his ankle.

“All of that…is just so embarrassingly obvious when I take five seconds to think about it,” he mumbled into her warm skin. “I feel like a complete clown for needing it spelled out. Ah, the part about you helping me, that is. I’m still not so sure how…gifted I’ll be at this, but I’m willing to be convinced.”

A low chuckle vibrated in the base of her throat, right where his cheek was pressed against it. “There’s nothing so very strange about that, husband. We all need obvious things pointed out to us once in a while—and more importantly, reassurances where we feel most vulnerable. That’s why we need each other. That, Ar-Kaln Zelekhir, is why you are good for this family. It will take time for we stubborn old wyrms to adapt to new ways of thinking, but I have seen you already bringing the younger ones closer together. Truly, I hadn’t begun to think of us as a family until you arrived and began working.”

She squeezed him tighter, gently rocking them from side to side.

“And the same applies to you, husband. You are not alone. Never.”

Kaln relaxed into her, let her hold him while the tension gradually drained from his frame. That took some time; he hadn’t realized just how much of it he had been storing, hadn’t let himself notice it building up. Now that she’d made him confront it, though, it was surprisingly easy to let it go. At least, it was while in her arms.

When he finally felt it was time to pull back, she released him with a final nuzzle at his temple. Kaln felt almost…paradoxical: drained, yet energized.

“Well, one thing is clear now that I’m actually thinking instead of reacting,” he said. “Reacting isn’t going to get us anywhere. I should’ve been working on this already, but…hopefully it isn’t too late to start. We need to make a plan. Very soon we are going to be the center of a lot of attention and we should make sure it unfolds on our terms.”

“Just so,” she agreed, nodding and favoring him with a proud smile. “And that should involve all four of us. Izayaroa’s insight into this will be, I think, even more valuable than my own. Emeralaphine’s of course is entirely useless here, but she will be no end of pissy if we lay plans for the family without including her.”

“Not without reason,” he said, finally cracking a grin. “And it’s not as if talking to her is wasted time, even if this is outside her field of expertise.”

“Oh, you are right about that, husband, and do believe that I respect her intelligence greatly. It’s just that she has little interest in mortals and I fear her contribution to this will consist only of snide commentary.”

“Well, Izayaroa is off somewhere with Percy until later today, so that’s where we’ll have to start.”

“Then so we shall,” she declared, gently disentangling herself and sliding off the bench to stand before him, offering a claw to help him up. “By your will, husband.”