Summer Nights (Slayers - Xellos/Filia - Oneshot Collection)

[Skiyomi]

Here's theme #42. Continue from Totally Smashed.

Just Because You Can Do It, Doesn’t Mean You Should. Rated PG.

Xellos’s eyes blinked open slowly, as though the body he used to get things done in the physical realm wasn’t quite as responsive as it usually was. Waking up and not knowing where he was was an unusual experience for him… so was waking up.

He concentrated on his surroundings. He was on a light-brown sofa in well-decorated (if a little froufrou) living room. It was an extremely clean space. In fact, the contrast between the unnecessarily clean living room and the somewhat messy kitchen with dirty dishes piled on the counter was very odd. He tilted his head to see that he’d been covered with a quilt. Several patches of the quilt featured kittens.

Oh dear… he thought as recollections began to emerge.

“It’s about time you woke up,” a voice complained.

Xellos turned his head to see Filia glowering at him from over by the mantle. She was holding a feather duster and ostensibly dusting the dust-free trinkets over the fireplace. Her body was tense, like she’d been waiting for something for a long time and now worried that it might have been better to go on waiting.

He sat up on the couch and touched his forehead gingerly. The fine chemical processing structures that he’d created the day before to properly enjoy alcohol seemed to be sloshing around as though preserved in death throes. It was a good thing that he didn’t really need those structures, because he knew that they’d been severely damaged by last night’s little… indiscretions. In short, alcohol was no longer fun.

“Well,” he said with some effort as he fingered the quilt over him with his other hand, “this is extremely unpleasant.”

Filia held her hands to her hips, one hand still clasping the feather duster. “A hangover is fate punishing you for drinking,” she told him self-righteously.

“I was talking about your quilting skills,” Xellos answered calmly.

She threw the feather duster at his head, which is, for the record, not a nice thing to do to someone who is hung-over. It was a mark of how bad Xellos was feeling that he didn’t dodge.

“I think,” Xellos said slowly, almost laboriously, as the feather duster fell on the floor in front of him, “that I’ve had enough of this.” He made adjustments. The air shimmered oddly around him for a moment, like super-heated air on a desert horizon. He straightened up and looked more alert.

“What did you just do?” Filia asked suspiciously.

“Got rid of the alcohol,” Xellos said simply.

Filia growled. “You can’t just opt out of the consequences of your vile actions!”

“Yes,” Xellos said, “I can. I just did.”

That much was evident. “Well, it’s not right,” Filia insisted. “You think you can just get drunk and then waltz in here and mess everything up without so much as paying the penalty of a headache in the morning?! There is a child in this house for your information. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Xellos made a determined study of his fingernails, which was difficult because he was wearing gloves. “I don’t think I should have to change my behavior just because you can’t grow up.”

Filia took a minute on that one, then set her teeth into a grimace. Too bad she didn’t have anything else to throw at him. “I was talking about Val.”

“He at least has more of an excuse then you,” Xellos said, visiting a smile on her.

Filia gave him a disapproving look. No one had the right to be that chipper the morning after bursting into their enemy’s house in a drunken stupor and then collapsing. She approached him, and he watched her as though wondering what she’d do next. Then she reached down and pointedly snatched up her feather duster. She sat down on the recliner perpendicular to the couch.

She sat there for a moment, plucking idly at the duster, before finally saying: “I didn’t think that you monsters could even get drunk.”

“We can,” Xellos said, swinging around his legs so he was facing her. He still had the quilt over him, which made him look very out of place. “We just don’t have to.”

Filia’s brow creased. “Why would you want to get drunk if you don’t have to?”

Xellos shrugged, not looking at her as he shook out the quilt and began folding it on his lap. “I suppose because I can.”

That explanation cut absolutely no ice with Filia. She gripped the feather duster in her hand, but held on in case he did something else to make her want to hurl it at him that was worse. “That’s no reason to do something!”

“Isn’t it?” Xellos said, using patented deflection technique number one (respond to questions with questions); “Then why do you get drunk?”he asked, pressing on to patented deflection technique number two (pretend the other person is the one with the problem).

Filia scowled. His patented deflection techniques weren’t anything new to her. “I don’t get drunk.”

“Oh really?” Xellos asked disbelievingly. “I’ve seen a few tell-tale bottles on high shelves where children’s hands can’t find them.”

Filia made an indignant squawking sound. Xellos had no right to go through her pantry and pass judgment on her. “Those are just for cooking!” she explained.

Xellos gave her a sly look.

“Alright,” she said harshly, “maybe occasionally when I’ve had a very bad day I’ll… put it to non-culinary use. But it’s not like I get wasted and come to your door lurching around and slurring nonsense!”

“That would be funny,” Xellos commented, giving the drunken-Filia scenario an almost criminal amount of thought.

“You didn’t seem like you were having fun,” Filia pointed out. “You sounded upset.”

One of those quick twitches crossed Xellos’s face. It was the kind that always left Filia unsure as to whether she imagined it or not. “By you?” He let out a little ‘as if!’ snort.

Filia narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “I never said by me.” She gave him a puzzled look. “What could I possibly have done to upset you so much?”

“I suppose you just do it naturally,” he said sourly.

“I was being serious,” Filia said severely. “What did I say that hurt so much that you needed to get smashed to forget it?”

“You can’t hurt me, Filia,” he said, falsely as it happened.

“My ‘pitying’ you seems to hurt you,” Filia struck back. She’d had all evening lying awake in bed and all morning waiting for him to wake up to mull over his strange performance. “But apparently that’s okay because ‘we’re the same’.”

“We’re not the same,” Xellos almost whispered.

“That’s what I said; you seemed to have other ideas.”

Xellos was quiet for a moment. It had all made more sense when he was slightly-or-more-than-slightly-as-the-case-may-be unhinged from reality. This idea that no matter how different they seemed that there was something about her that called out a fellow feeling… that they could understand each other in ways that no one else could.

“I was a little out of sorts as you might have noticed,” he answered.

“Maybe,” Filia said, “but that doesn’t mean it came out of nowhere.” She gave him a searching look. “What were you thinking?”

He got up abruptly, picking up his staff from where Filia had leaned it against the couch. “Clearly I wasn’t,” his back said.

“You were!” Filia shot back indignantly, standing and moving toward him. “Maybe you didn’t like what you were thinking but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!” She reached out and touched his shoulder. “Xellos?”

He turned around snatched her hand, but when he spoke next he sounded more tired than angry. “You’re doing it again, Filia.”

“What?” Filia asked, unsure as to whether she should take back her hand or let things lie. It felt very much like that brief moment when he’d touched her face the night before.

“Pitying me,” he said, definitely sounding resigned.

“I’m not,” Filia said, caught off-guard by this accusation.

“You are,” he said heavily, “and you were. I can feel it.”

“Well, maybe I am,” she shouted, “but if I am it’s just because you can’t even manage to tell me what’s going on without resorting to changing the subject or your stupid catchphrase or pretending this is all about me!”

“It is all about you,” he said gravely, though he understood Filia’s meaning.

“I’m not the one that’s upset about something!” she yelled back. He raised an eyebrow and she added: “Fine. I am upset. But only because you started it.”

“We are rather in tune to each other, aren’t we?” Xellos observed with a small smile.

She very nearly stamped her foot. “You’re changing the subject again.”

“I’m not,” he said. “Not really.” He looked into her had-it-up-to-here-with-this-bullsh*it expression and sighed. He sank back onto the couch, still holding her hand so that she was obliged to sit next to him.

“Could you say that you’d be happy about being called a slave?” he asked her.

“That?” she asked incredulously. “Come on, you’ve said way worse things about me!” That was what her words said, but there was a prickle of guilt just beyond them. Xellos could taste it. It tasted better than the pity, but he still didn’t like being on the receiving end of it.

He scratched his cheek in thought. “I suppose I have,” he said.

“Don’t just admit it so calmly like that!” Filia exploded.

“I thought you’d appreciate my honesty,” he answered smoothly.

She scowled. “You’re not honest. You tell the truth—most of the time—but that’s not the same thing.”

Xellos couldn’t help but smile. Filia was more perceptive than most people would give her credit. That’s why exchanges with her, while often leading to triumph for him, could easily end in such scenarios as him getting the bright idea to marinade his troubles in whiskey. What a troublesome girl she was…

She was looking down now, at his hand still holding hers—lightly, almost inviting her to let go. “And that’s what was bothering you?” she asked quietly, as she let his words sink in.

“Don’t feel too sorry for me,” he warned: “it’s not species-appropriate. Anyway,” he added, with a shrug of his shoulders, “we’re all governed by limitations… you as much as I, perhaps even more so. And don’t fool yourself. There are very few things that I would change even if I had the power to.”

She leaned toward him, eyes wide, surprised and watching. “…But there are things you would change?”

He increased the pressure on her hand for just a moment, perhaps more as a reminder that he was holding it than anything. “I suppose there’s always a line,” he said speculatively, “but it’s rather sketchy as to where exactly it is. So I’m afraid I won’t know until I’ve crossed it.”

“And you’re worried that you’re going to cross it?” she asked. It must be true, she thought, or the idea of his freedom being restricted wouldn’t have driven him to… to try out drunk.

He looked at her very seriously. “I’m going to cross it,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

“But what will happen to you if you do that?” she asked. Surely Xellos’s creator and master would do more than give him a time-out if he stepped out of line.

He rolled his shoulders back. “Hope that the line gets redrawn,” he said simply.

She gripped the feather duster with the hand not being cradled in Xellos’s gloved one, sliding the feathers idly against the base of the couch as she thought. That hardly seemed like a satisfying or secure way of looking at things. But maybe Xellos was valuable enough that he could get away with whatever small indiscretion was so important to him.

He let go of her hand and tapped the side of her nose playfully with his index finger. “But look at it this way,” he said brightly, “for someone in my station to be able to hang around in some dragon hovel after a night’s hard drinking without stirring up trouble seems to imply a more than comfortable amount of liberty.”

She scowled at his finger, still in the air in one of Xellos’s stock gestures. His serious to silly attitude was starting to annoy her. Not only that—her house was not a hovel!

“You don’t know that,” she shot back. “You haven’t even reported in—after spending the night at the very nice house of a golden dragon no less!”

He withdrew his hand and looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. He leaned against his staff and propelled himself off the couch. “I suppose I’d better go face the music then,” he said in a voice that had a bit of a sigh in it.

He looked at her, looking at him, and perhaps her pity wasn’t as terrible an experience as the first time.

“Oh, might as well,” he said, “I’m in trouble anyway,” and kissed her briefly on the lips before disappearing from the physical plane.

She brought the feather duster around in a heavy, inevitable arc, slicing the air where he’d been just a second ago with a more terrible force than a mere feather duster ought to carry.

“JUST WHAT KIND OF ‘LINE’ WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT CROSSING?!” she demanded of the still shimmering space where he’d disappeared.

 

[Skiyomi]

Here's theme #18.

If Looks Could Kill… Rated PG.

“I’ll kill him,” Filia vowed in high, scandalized voice. She stared across the dining hall at the purple-haired fiend sitting just two tables away and cheerily giving his order to the waitress.

“I don’t really think that’s going to work, Miss Filia,” Amelia said nervously, with a discouraging wave of her hand.

Filia, with a great deal of effort, managed to shift her gaze from her least favorite traveling companion over to Amelia, her seat-mate. Even though they all traveled in one party, they often took up several tables at restaurants. This was because Lina and Gourry required so much… space when they ate. First off, they tended to order more food than could possibly fit on the table at one time, so there wasn’t room for anyone else’s meal. That wasn’t such a big deal because any meal at the same table as Lina and Gourry became their meal. What really worried anyone forced to sit next to them was the flying arms that flapped in unpredictable and sometimes impossible directions as the two of them shoveled food in their mouths as quickly as they could. A bruised jaw had taught Filia early on that sitting next to Lina when there’s anything deep-fried on the table was a bad idea. That elbow was bony. And this wasn’t even mentioning the silverware fights that occasionally broke out…

Bottom line was, she and Amelia had retreated to a table close by as soon as Lina started cracking her knuckles and Gourry’s stomach had started growling. Zelgadis had left them too, for a table at the far end of the dining hall with his back to them. He’d been in a bit of a bad mood lately.

But none of them were the problem. The problem was…

“Well, I didn’t mean it literally,” Filia snapped, “but someone’s got to do something about that monster!” Filia turned her gaze back to ‘that monster’ and glowered. “Xellos! He thinks he can just waltz back into the group after what he did last week? Well, he’s wrong! It was all his fault that that town got destroyed anyway. If he’d only told us that dragons weren’t allowed then we never would’ve gone there in the first place. Him and his stupid guide book… I bet he would’ve just let Miss Lina and Mister Gourry eat that Dradora’s Surprise too!” Her complexion greened slightly, but she mastered the urge to throw up. “I should give him a piece of my mind!” she declared, reaching almost absentmindedly for the mace holstered to her thigh.

“Right, I just don’t think that’s going to work,” Amelia said weakly, deciding not to mention that the whole ‘town destroying’ thing only happened because Filia lost her temper.

Fila turned a betrayed look on Amelia. “How can you of all people say that? Aren’t you always going on about fighting evil?” She gestured broadly at Xellos’s table-for-one. “There’s evil!”

“I know that,” Amelia said, adding some pepper to her soup. “But do you really think going over there and shouting at him is going to do any good? This is Mister Xellos we’re talking about. He’d probably just think it’s funny.”

Filia relaxed the hand on her mace, feeling slightly dismayed. “But…”

“After all, Mister Xellos is a monster,” Amelia went on. “They really thrive off that kind of negativity.”

Filia looked angry, then she looked crestfallen, then she looked angry again. “Are you trying to say that there’s nothing I can do to punish him for his bad behavior because he’d just enjoy it?” she demanded.

Some of what Amelia said, Filia was forced to admit, made a lot of sense. Xellos seemed to get an unnatural kick out of upsetting people. Then again, when she’d fought with him before… well, he’d smiled and he’d laughed at her, of course, just like the jerk he was. But sometimes there had been a… strained quality to it. Like some of her rage and a few of her insults had actually hit the mark in a way that made him a little uncomfortable. By what Amelia was saying, he should’ve been having the time of his life… but for some reason her words had stung him…

“I’m not saying that,” Amelia explained. “It’s just that there are other ways.”

Filia’s ears pricked up from behind the globular ornaments attached to her headdress. “What kind of ways?”

“Well, if he likes negativity, then you just have to be positive,” Amelia said brightly.

Filia’s brow crinkled. “Positive?” Treating Xellos with any kind of positivity aside from positive revulsion had never occurred to her.

“You know,” Amelia prodded. “Think happy thoughts! Praise life and all its wonders! True Love! Friendship! Justice! Charity!” She smiled. “Be nice to him and he won’t be able to stand it.”

“I can’t be nice to Xellos,” Filia half-shrieked, half-whispered. “The very idea is just… no! I can’t do it!”

“But just think about it,” Amelia encouraged her. “There’s probably nothing that would bother him more than you being nice to him.”

Filia gave it some thought. Of course it was impossible, but… “Would that really work?”

“Oh yes,” Amelia said with a fervent nod. “We’ve threatened it before when we needed him to tell us more than he wanted to.” She did a celebratory fist-clench. “Even monsters quake in fear against the power of JUSTICE!”

Now that Amelia mentioned it… she did remember Xellos looking a little uncomfortable when Amelia had climbed the tree in the village square and started proclaiming the virtues of the heavens. Though, then again, Lina had buried her face in her hands, Zelgadis had started muttering what was either a prayer or a curse, and even Gourry had looked a little embarrassed in the face of this impromptu Justice-harangue.

“That’s always been our emergency plan for dealing with Mister Xellos,” Amelia went on. “You know, if we ever had to fight him or something.”

“Really?” Filia asked.

“Yeah,” Amelia said, now sounding a little unsure. “Although… Miss Lina says we don’t need to worry about that anymore, because if Mister Xellos does get out of control, we can just throw you at him, shout ‘Look, a distraction!’ and run off.”

Filia slammed her hands down on the table. “She said what?”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it,” Amelia said, holding up her hands and looking like she wished she hadn’t mentioned it at all. “It’s just that… you know… you two get distracted by each other, that’s all.”

“We do not get distracted by each other!”

“Of course you don’t!” Amelia went with, because Filia was eyeing her silverware in a not-too-friendly manner. In the last silverware battle, Filia had actually beaten Lina. The only one who’d ever managed that before was Gourry. Best not to tempt fate. After all, armed only with a soup spoon, she’d be at a natural disadvantage.

Filia appeared to calm down at this retraction. She breathed deep for a moment and then turned to glance at Xellos. “So… how would I go about this… positive thing around him?”

“Just sort of… radiate happiness,” Amelia said thoughtfully, not commenting on Filia’s Xellos-distractibility factor.

Filia looked and Amelia with a severe expression. “How am I supposed to radiate happiness around that?”

“Well…” Amelia said, sitting back. “Try not to think about it being Mister Xellos. Just think about things that make you happy… flowers… kittens…” She tried to put herself in Filia’s shoes. “…antiquing?”

Filia stared at the wood grain for a minute. Would this actually work? On the one hand, yes, negativity was a monster’s sustenance so positivity should at least annoy, if not hurt, him. On the other hand, a bit of her soul might die if she actually went through with it. Was this really the only way of effectively fighting Xellos?

She made a fist and slammed it down on the table. “I can do this. I am strong!” she declared.

“Go get him, Miss Filia!” Amelia chirped.

Filia got up, and made that slow, painful walk to Xellos’s table. Halfway there she stopped and looked back at Amelia who gave her a thumbs up. She gulped and kept moving.

He looked up at her as he saw her approach and she knew from that moment that this would be no picnic. Just seeing him look at her with that curious expression made her fingers itch for her mace. She noticed that he’d already gotten his dinner order. It was a slice of cherry supreme pie. For dinner. Sure, monsters think that the rules don’t apply to them—that they can just go around eating dessert for dinner and not face any of the consequences. Bastards.

She stopped herself and tried to focus. If she was going to get that upset over a slice of pie then this whole operation was doomed. She forced her face into a smile and sat down across from him.

“…Hi,” she said.

And it sounded so wrong! Xellos should never be greeted with a simple ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello’ or even a slightly frivolous ‘Hey there, hi there, ho there.’ Not when ‘Xellos!’, ‘What are you doing here?’ or ‘You’ve got a lot of nerve to show your face around here after what you did!’ were infinitely more appropriate.

He stared into her smiling face. He definitely seemed put-off by the friendly greeting, so Filia hoped her plan was working. But just a second later he turned his attention back to his pie.

“Nice effort, Filia,” he said, “but you need to scrunch up your eyes more if you want to get it just right.”

That threw Filia’s smile completely off. “What?”

“Of course,” Xellos said, tapping his cheek thoughtfully with his knife, “yours is way better than Mister Zelgadis’s try, so I guess I have to give you credit for that.”

She looked at him like he was crazy, which she was beginning to think that he was. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Your impression of me,” he explained, taking a bite of pie and chewing it in contemplation. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” he added.

She stood up violently. “It wasn’t an impression! Why would I ever want to be like a filthy mon—” She remembered her role just in time and calmed down. She lowered herself back into her seat. “I mean, I was just smiling. I’m allowed to, you know,” she added with slight petulance.

“I suppose so,” Xellos mused, as though this was a debatable issue that he wasn’t currently in the mood to argue. “And what exactly are you smiling about?”

Filia was encouraged by Xellos’s reaction of mild distaste. Although, to be honest, it seemed like her smiling was bothering him less because it was positive and more because he had the sneaking feeling that she was making fun of him.

“Oh… you know… it’s just… a beautiful day, that’s all,” Filia said, struggling to play her part. “So full of life,” she added vindictively.

“Life?” he repeated, taking a bite of his pie.

“Yes, life,” she answered through gritted teeth, her eyes following the movement of his hand.

He noticed this and gestured at his slice of pie with a fork. “Did you want some?” he asked in that awful ingratiating tone.

“No,” she said stiffly. “I don’t eat pie for dinner.” After all, if you don’t eat your meat then you just can’t have any pudding. How can you have pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

“And aren’t you the dietary paragon of virtue,” he commented nastily, taking another bite.

“Anyway, as I was saying about life,” Filia pushed forward.

“What about life?” Xellos asked, as though hoping that Filia might get to the point soon.

“Well… uh…” Filia wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. She hoped that she’d just praise life a bit and Xellos would shriek and steam would hiss off of him or something… or at least he’d just get annoyed by it. She strove for something to say… Amelia was so much better at this kind of thing. “It’s good, that’s all.” She paused. “And… I’m happy about it.”

“Wonderful,” Xellos commented dully. “And you were moved to report this happiness to me… why?”

Filia bit her lip. This line wasn’t really working. What else besides praising life had Amelia mentioned? Something about true love…

She stared at Xellos for a moment.

Moving on…

Well, she’d been trying to think of adorable kittens since she sat down, so the psychic warfare really wasn’t working on that side. The problem might have been that she was praising life, smiling, and thinking of happy things without actually being very happy. Since it was all directed at Xellos, there was probably a little too much malice behind it for it to count as positive.

…What else do you do when you’re being nice to someone? Well, you compliment them, but she couldn’t really do that with Xellos, could she? Certainly not sincerely. And if none of the other ploys had worked without sincerity, then neither would this one.

Then again… there had been a few times since they’d met that Xellos had… well, for want of a better word, he’d complimented her. He probably didn’t mean it most of the time, and there was usually some sort of nasty barb attached to whatever he said but… whenever he did it, it was always… strange. Considering that they hated each other, maybe he’d feel the same disequilibrium if she complimented him… even if it was forced.

She ran her eyes over him, searching for something to comment on, whilst he chewed his pie and looked at her like she was losing her mind.

“Your umm…” she decided to go for something she thought was fairly neutral, “your staff is… nice.”

He narrowed one eye and gave her a ‘Yep. The dragon’s definitely losing her marbles’ look. “My staff.”

“Yes,” she went on, now that she was already too deep in to get out. “It’s um… well, is that a ruby or something?”

He looked over at the staff leaning against his chair and then gave her a mildly befuddled look. “You’re saying you like my staff?”

“Oh yes,” she said triumphantly, quite clearly seeing how her comments were confusing him. He was already trying to figure out her game. This was working! “And… your hair is so… shiny and… purple.” Thinking up compliments was hard. Not, she was shocked to realize, because she couldn’t think of features worth complimenting, but because she couldn’t quite explain why they were worth complimenting.

He surveyed her with the same mystified look as she tried to think up a good follow-up to ‘purple’, but suddenly, the clouds seem to clear. “Ah,” he said understandingly, setting down his silverware and sitting back. “I think I know what’s going on here.”

She strove not to panic or turn around and exchange a look with Amelia. “W-what?” she tried. “Going on? Nothing’s going on. We’re just talking.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Your technique is understandably awkward, but I think I see what you’re going for.”

Filia was not entirely sure what he was talking about, but bristled with indignation in any case. How dare he call her technique awkward? Whatever technique he meant.

“I must admit, I’m surprised,” Xellos said, looking at her as though in a whole new light. “But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be.”

“Surprised about what?” she demanded.

“You’ve been sheltered in that temple your whole life, and now that you’re out… well, things are different,” he said with a helpless shrug. “You’re not used to dealing with this kind of thing.”

“What are you talking about?” she snapped. She thought she was fulfilling her role as guide quite well despite the fact that she’d spent most of her life in the temple, and she didn’t take kindly to garbage questioning her navigating abilities.

“Of course, it’s understandable that you’d have needs. Perhaps I should just be surprised at your gall to actually pursue something like this, though,” he looked at her almost fondly, “you’ve never had a shortage of that. Still, it must’ve taken a lot of nerve to try this—more than I honestly would’ve expected from you.”

He scratched his cheek. “As bizarre as the situation is, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a little intrigued by the idea.”

He looked up, as though deep in contemplation, while she took her turn to look at him like he’d gone mad. Finally he withdrew from his thought process and shook his head, “I’m afraid the answer is no,” he summed up. “Even though we’d both obviously enjoy it, we’d really just be asking for trouble.”

She slammed her fists on the table and stood up. “Enjoy what?” she shouted. “Tell me what you’re talking about, you stupid monster!”

He wagged his finger in front of her and treated her to an obnoxious smile. “Dragons are such abysmal flirts.”

Three rage-filled seconds later, the table split in half. Xellos stared down at his pie, which now had a mace embedded in it.

“I wasn’t finished with that,” he said.

A scream shattered every glass in the room, as Filia brought her hands up to the gem on her robes and began glowing gold.

Amelia, having watched the whole thing from a distance, scuttled over to the table Lina and Gourry were still eating savagely at, as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

“Miss Lina,” Amelia tugged urgently at her sleeve. “Miss Lina, we have to get out of here!”

“Huh?” Lina looked over at the table Xellos was still sitting calmly at, watching the glowing dragon girl in front of him. “Oh geez! What’s going on with those two now?”

“I kinda told Miss Filia about our emergency plan for dealing with Xellos, and she thought she’d try it,” Amelia explained anxiously.

“You told her about Plan X?” Lina asked sharply. “Well, it doesn’t look like it’s working!”

“I think she’s doing it wrong,” Amelia insisted.

“Oh man,” Lina said, letting her head fall into her hand. “And I wasn’t even done yet. Do you think there’s time to get a to-go bag?”

“No!” Amelia shouted.

“XELLOS!!” a voice screamed, getting louder and louder until it was punctuated with a laser ray.

“Now, now, there’s no reason to be shy about it,” was the only thing that they heard before the thunderous splitting of timber left a dragon-shaped hole in the wall.

Lina chewed on a chicken wing idly as she watched a tiny purple dot and a larger golden dot disappear noisily over the horizon. The Innkeeper gawped at the hole in the wall. He appeared to be crying.

“Do you think it’s time to retire Plan X?” Lina asked.

“Plan X can work,” Amelia maintained.

She turned to look at the buckled wood hanging sadly over the fissure. “It just… obviously doesn’t work for all people.”

 

[Skiyomi]

Here's theme #26.

Blended. Rated PG.

Her parents had passed away long ago; even her adoptive home at the temple of the Fire Dragon King was gone, along with those she’d lived alongside for years. So Filia could be nothing but thankful from the bottom of her heart to even have a family now. It was a family that… admittedly must’ve looked strange from the outside. None of them had a drop of blood in common. Heck, they didn’t even have race in common. But here they were a… blended family.

And it was all because of Val. He was what had drawn them together and he was what they all orbited around now. The tottering child with the unfortunate haircut passing his mornings at the local preschool had no idea what he had brought her; what he had brought them all. Hopefully, someday he would.

There had been many moments in their time together in which that fact had been brought home to her: when she first took Val’s egg home; when Jillas, standing on Gravos’s shoulders, had hung the shop sign up for their opening day; when Val’s egg had hatched. But for some reason she always came back to, of all things, the paperwork.

Filia had been determined to enroll Val in the local preschool. Just because he was a creature of staggering power didn’t mean that he shouldn’t be allowed playmates. She wanted him to get acclimated to the community of humans, to be accepted, to learn, and to make friends. He deserved that. She desperately needed to give him the happy childhood he’d been denied in his past life.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t worried. There were a thousand things that could go wrong. What if he had trouble leaving her? What if he thought she was abandoning him? What if he transformed and burned down the school house? What if the other kids didn’t see how special he was?

Well, now that he ran ahead of her to join his buddies on the playground, and she practically had to drag him out of the sandbox at the end of the class, her worries seemed pointless. But they’d been so real when she was filling out the forms to enroll him.

After reading over safety procedures, some legal mumbo jumbo, and filling out his medical history, she’d come to the pick-up authorization. It was a list of people besides herself who she’d allow to pick up her son from school. She put Jillas and Gravos down in a heartbeat. They loved Val and would protect him to their deaths. She knew that it was the delight of their lives that they’d somehow made the transition from his devoted servants to his adoptive uncles.

Her pen stopped hesitantly along the next line, poised to make a familiar stroke. Why? Why did she almost automatically have the urge to write that name? The name of her household’s other sometimes-resident. This list was for people she entrusted with the treasure of all treasures in her life. It was not the place for someone who could never prove himself trustworthy.

And yet… she struggled.

She didn’t know why she thought of this now, as she added a smattering of spices to the soup that would be that day’s lunch. Maybe it was because he was there—humming at her. He’d taken to humming tunelessly whenever he was idly hanging around her house and couldn’t think of anything to say to start a sparring session. He knew it drove her completely up the wall. Just lately, though, he’d found a new, even more obnoxious trick: he’d stop humming. Now that set her teeth on edge.

Xellos. No matter how much she wished otherwise, he was also a part of this blended family. And she was almost sure that he hadn’t meant to be. Almost.

The fact was, he was just… there. Oh sure, he’d disappear occasionally, but it seemed like he spent all his spare time in her home. She wasn’t even sure if he went away at night, which worried her slightly.

So in some ways, it wasn’t surprising that she’d thought of him while filling out the form. If she was Val’s adoptive mother and Jillas and Gravos were his adoptive uncles then Xellos was… well…

It had been an accident. The look on his face told the whole story, really. Xellos had visited her many times before Val hatched. At first she’d been horrified beyond belief, thinking that he might be there to steal Val away; to deliver him to the monster race and raise her boy into something dark and tainted, or to kill him before he could even take a breath to threaten them. But he’d seemed indifferent to any such scheme. In fact, the unhatched Val had been an afterthought to Xellos, who only brought him up as a means to insult her. “Haven’t dropped him yet, have you, Filia?” he’d ask sneeringly. To her dawning surprise, amidst sustained irritation and the desire to smack him upside the head, she realized that he was there for one person and one person alone: her.

That had changed after Val hatched. Oh, he still showered her with attention—mostly negative, but Val had innocently and unthinkingly propelled him into a new role. “Dudduh,” Val had gurgled unmistakably. If Xellos wasn’t shocked by this, then he was an even better actor than Filia gave him credit for. It was as though the wind had been knocked completely out of him, and he could do nothing more than stare keenly, curiously, perplexedly, at the little bundle in his arms. Before, Val had just been another tool with which to mock Filia. In fact, he’d only picked up the child in order to better insult her for having to repeat “Say Mommy!” to the baby for an hour before he followed suit. But suddenly he was assigned a new fate in the child’s life. Just like that, he was ‘Dudduh.’

Filia had tried to fix it. “No, no, no, no, no!” she’d whimpered, snatching her Val away from the still gobsmacked Xellos. “Not ‘Dudduh!’ Absolutely, certainly, 100% not ‘Dudduh!’” But Val had been resolute. “Dudduh,” he’d said, stretching out his fat little arms toward his newly christened father-figure.

So by relation, Xellos might have earned the right for consideration on that list. He was ‘daddy’ nowadays to Val, and there wasn’t a damn thing Filia could do about it. No more than she could stop the gossiping villagers from assuming that she and Xellos were married or at least ‘shacking up’ (their phrase, not hers).

The funny thing was, Xellos had sort of… adapted to his fatherly role. Now he hung around not just to dish out verbal abuse to her, but to play Candyland, tag, and destroy-the-resale-value-of-Filia’s-house with the son who had adopted him instead of it being the other way around. He was even talking about building a tree house. It was like he’d caught some kind of madness.

But… but on the other hand, she’d thought wildly as she’d stared down at the legal form, he had no right to be trusted with her child. He was a monster! She couldn’t trust him just because he acted nice. He always acted nice! That didn’t mean there wasn’t some kind of sinister scheme under all the niceness. Maybe this was just fun and games for him; a way to pass the time and nothing more. But she couldn’t know. She could never know for sure whether or not he was just playing the waiting game to devastate her and take away what was most precious to her.

She didn’t know how long she’d stared at that form without moving. Her pen had been frozen on the paper, and she couldn’t bring herself to move it away or to press forward. She knew she’d have to make a choice, and she wasn’t sure if it was the right one.

But that horrible moment of indecision was past now. Val had settled himself pleasantly among his new classmates this last month and, aside from accidentally causing the water table to boil over that one time, he’d been doing just fine. Having Jillas or Gravos occasionally charged to pick him up from class whenever Filia was too busy to go down to the schoolhouse herself to walk him home earned him much respect amongst his peers. Gravos’s stature alone was impressive and Jillas managed to dazzle the children with a fireworks display. So Val had no shortage of friends and was a happy, healthy, and surprisingly normal boy.

Xellos stopped humming from his perch on the recliner. Filia scowled and turned away from her cooking.

“Stop that,” she ordered him sternly.

Xellos looked up at her with a would-be befuddled expression. “I’m not doing anything,” he’d said innocently.

She crossed her arms in a movement that she hoped indicated that she wasn’t going to take any crap from him that day. “Don’t play dumb with me,” she said. “You know what you’re doing.”

“Why don’t you tell me what I’m supposedly doing,” he said calmly.

“You’re not humming!” she snapped.

He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she glared. “You are! I can hear you not-humming at me!”

“Truly that must be deafening,” he said with a smirk.

“It is!” she insisted.

“Would you like me to start humming again?” he offered.

“No!” she shouted, turning back to her lunch preparation. “No,” she said more calmly, having caught sight of the clock. It was nearly twelve.

“Well, those really seem to be my only options,” he answered. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“Why don’t—” she began softly. She stopped herself. “Why don’t you do something useful for once and take Val home from school,” she ordered in a put-on harsh tone that in no way matched her expression.

He couldn’t see her face, but he seemed to feel the tension in the air. He stared at her back for a few minutes as she tried to go about the casual business of preparing lunch. Then she heard him rise from his seat.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and was gone.

 

[Skiyomi]

Theme #56.

Not Human. Rated G.

She’d never actually claimed that she was human; she’d just… never quite said that she wasn’t. It’s not like she was trying to keep it a secret or anything, but in all the getting-to-know-yous of moving into a new town and starting a new business, somehow ‘I’m a dragon’ had just never come up in conversation. It was… a bit awkward and hard to lead up to. She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t a big, scaly deal; that after people got to know her they wouldn’t care what species she was.

Well, it had come out piece by piece. She had a sort of intuition that was hard to miss and they couldn’t help but notice that she seemed a little too well-informed about what kind of weather would be heading their way and who would be sick in the future. That was their first tip off that there was something supernatural about her. They knew she was stronger than a woman her size ought to be, easily lifting large vases and heavy maces that not even the strongest men in their village could budge. Then Jon Calk spread it around that her hat had slipped when she’d reached down to pick up the vase he’d gone to buy and that he’d seen that she had pointed ears. Whispers followed that their mysterious resident might be an elf maiden. But, in a fit of temper, the appearance of her tail had spelled things out once and for all to them. They knew. And they weren’t pleased.

She should’ve known trouble was brewing when they’d been wary of Jillas and Gravos helping her out. She’d tried to tell herself that they weren’t bad people—just fearful. It wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for beastmen tribes to raid the nearby villages when they couldn’t find food. She told herself that they’d learn soon enough that Jillas and Gravos weren’t anything to be afraid of…

But no. It was all over now. She’d heard the talk, seen the fear on their faces. The whole town reeked of it. ‘Who will protect our children?’, ‘They can breathe fire, you know!’, ‘Who’s to say she’s not here to make war with us?’ and ‘If we don’t do something about her for good, she’ll seek her vengeance upon us!’ She could feel terror, the said-terror and the unsaid-terror. Her skin itched with it.

And there was no fooling herself or making excuses anymore. Jillas had run back to the shop from the town square that night to report that the villagers were holding a meeting—and it didn’t look good. That was when she knew that they had to leave, and fast.

She and Gravos gathered up as much of their merchandise as they could carry. A lot of it would have to be left behind, she realized, but they’d have to take the loss. Jillas, however, carried the most precious cargo of all: the egg containing the reborn Val. Her son.

She dimmed the lamps and nodded to her two beastmen determinedly. Without a sound they crept out the back way of the building that made up their home and their shop. She closed the door behind them knowing that she’d never enter it again.

Then the three of them hiked down the dirt slope at the back of the house, careful not to drop anything that they were carrying or trip in the darkness. Filia had decided quickly that they’d better walk instead of having her fly them away. The villagers had skilled archers and, seeing her in flight, she was sure that they’d use them. She wouldn’t be worried for herself if it came to that, but her passengers…

They hadn’t gotten more than a few yards away from the house when a glow from behind them forced them to turn around. Filia stifled a gasp. They were there… already. All the men and many of the women of the village were tromping up to her house with torches in hand, chins set determinedly and eyes dancing madly in the flames.

She froze, unsure of what to do. If they made a run for it now, the villagers would surely see the movement and chase them. Loaded down as they were, they wouldn’t be able to move very fast. On the other hand, if they stayed where they were and the mob torched her house, they’d easily be spotted in the light. Either way…

If it came to a fight, she could win. But… she did not want to be the thing that struck terror into these villagers’ hearts—even if they drove her to it.

“Boss?” Jillas whispered uncertainly.

Filia held up a finger to her lips. Maybe if they were lucky the mob would go inside the house and then they’d be able to…

“You’ve come to the wrong place,” a mild voice said.

Filia bit down on her lip to keep sound from escaping. Xellos was there. He hadn’t so much appeared on her porch as stepped out of the shadows like he’d always been there.

The leader of the mob, a man with a coarse, grey beard that took up most of his face, held up his torch to better see the man (or monster, as the case may be) who had addressed him. He scowled. “Aren’t you a friend of that blasted dragon? There’s no use trying to hide her! We’ve seen her for the beast she really is!”

“Oh, I don’t think anyone could mistake us for friends,” Xellos commented in a chillingly light-hearted voice. “And quite the contrary, I’ve been on to her tricks long before you. The fact is, she’s already left—trying to escape on foot.”

Filia made frantic eye-contact with Jillas. She’d told him that if push came to shove and she had to fight the villagers, to run away as fast as he could to protect Val. And now, just because that monster was set on destroying everything she sought to build, she’d have to…

“Where is she?” the leader of the mob growled as the torch-waving group grumbled amongst themselves.

“There’s no need to be anxious,” Xellos tutted. He pointed north across Blackfield Street with his staff. “There. She’s got a head start, but if you hurry you might just be able to catch her.”

The bloodlust-fueled mob did not need to be told twice. They did an about-face and squeezed their party of maniacs down the narrow street, accidentally burning the hair of the people in front of them along the way, but with a few cries and the smell of burnt skin, they set out on the dragon’s tail.

…By going in the exact opposite direction as where she was standing.

Filia sagged with relief. It was only then that she felt the ache in her jaw and unclenched her teeth. She didn’t know what to think and could barely command her own body to take her chance and move, guiding Gravos and Jillas back on their silent retreat from the village.

She glanced over her shoulder at her porch one last time, but Xellos was already gone.

*****

Several hours later they rested in a forest clearing. They were all bone-weary long before then, but Filia had refused to stop until they had left substantial distance between them and the village. Even now, she only wanted to stop for a few hours so that Gravos and Jillas could get some sleep while she kept watch. Who could say when the villagers would realize they’d been duped and turn around?

She warmed her hands against the fire she’d built while Gravos snored lightly and Jillas’s tail wagged in his sleep. They could almost pretend they were camping if it weren’t for the paralyzing fear of getting hunted down like animals.

“I must say, I thought that was a very disappointing mob,” Xellos commented before appearing across from her.

Filia withdrew her hands from the fire and glared at him. She was angry with him, base-line because he was Xellos and Xellos was someone to be angry at. She was more angry because he’d scared her out of her wits earlier and had probably done it on purpose too. Yet, it was also because of him that they’d managed to send the villagers astray and escape them. …That probably made her the angriest of all, but it kept her tirade in check.

“Not even a single pitchfork,” Xellos added, shaking his head as though unable to believe how low standards had sunk in the mob game. “A mob without farm equipment has lost its soul.”

“What are you, a connoisseur of angry mobs or something?” Filia snapped.

Xellos shrugged. “I suppose you could say that. I’ve seen a lot of them.”

“Gotten chased by them?” Filia asked snidely. “No,” she snorted. Mobs should chase monsters, but they never do—only things that look like monsters. “You probably incite them.”

“I prefer to think of it as redirecting their negative energies and channeling them toward more productive activities,” Xellos answered with a smile.

Filia scowled. Miss Lina was right; Xellos should’ve been a politician.

“So why didn’t you ‘redirect their negative energies’ toward me?” she asked irritably. “You would’ve enjoyed that, wouldn’t you?”

“I always enjoy seeing you set fire to entire towns and then trample them,” he answered serenely. “But I opted for a more prudent course of action in this case.”

“Hmmph!” was her only response.

The fire crackled and popped loudly as a bit of kindling burned all the way through and shattered into two halves.

“So… where are you headed to now, Filia?” Xellos asked.

Filia opened her mouth to say something but found that she had nothing to say. She closed it, crossed her arms and finally said: “It’s none of a monster’s business where I go.”

“Meaning you don’t know,” Xellos summed up neatly.

Filia grimaced and turned her nose up at him. “Well in case you hadn’t noticed, I was in a bit of a hurry!”

“Of course,” Xellos allowed. “You were more concerned with getting away then going anywhere. Though now that you’ve gotten this far, I’d say it’s time to give the matter some thought.”

“I don’t need advice from you,” Filia retorted, though she was damned if she could think of a way not to follow his advice… unless she took up a nomadic lifestyle, but that really didn’t appeal to her that much anymore.

“I suppose you could always go to one of the other dragon temples,” Xellos mused, unable to grasp the notion that his guidance was not welcome.

Filia sucked in a hasty breath. “Never,” she said.

“That down on organized religion nowadays, are you?” He sounded a little too pleased.

“It’s not that,” Filia glowered at him. “It’s just… I swore I wouldn’t go back there after what I found out. …And anyway,” she said, nodding at Val’s egg where it lay wrapped in Jillas’s cloak, “I couldn’t trust them with Val.”

“I suppose it would be a little too much to ask for them to learn a lesson,” Xellos said with a little sigh. “Ah well. Then, since the humans have kicked you out and you won’t go back to the dragons, I guess the only option left is to throw your lot in with the monster race,” he decided gleefully.

Filia fell over backwards and stayed down for a solid five seconds. By the time she picked herself up off the ground her glare of death, doom, and other icky things was firmly in place. “You shouldn’t even joke about something like that!”

“Ah, but Filia,” he chided, wagging a finger at her, “you must admit that someone of your talent and predilection could be legitimately useful to the monster race.”

“I don’t want to be useful to you demons!” she shot back. Where did he get off questioning her predilections? None of them were monstrous as far as she was concerned! …Well… except for when someone tried her patience while she was holding a bludgeoning implement. But that was righteous fury and therefore shouldn’t be counted. “I’d rather stay holed up alone in a cave my whole life than mix with the likes of you!”

Xellos lowered the Almighty Finger of Admonishment (yes, it’s deserving of capital letters) and looked mildly disappointed. “Ah well,” he said. “I don’t really have the authority to make that kind of invitation anyway, I suppose.”

He looked a little glum for a moment, but suddenly his spirits seemed to improve. “So, I’m guessing you’ll be looking for a cave to live in, then?” he asked brightly.

“Hardly,” Filia answered. “I’ve already decided. I’m going to a new town and trying again.”

Xellos raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Because you enjoyed fleeing from an angry mob so much that you thought you’d try it a second time?”

“It’ll be different this time!” Filia snapped.

“How?” Xellos asked flatly.

“Well... you don’t know!” Filia struggled, trying to put her hope for a brighter future among humans into words. “Maybe the next town will have a more accepting population. And I think I’ll let them know right away that I’m a dragon. I think part of the problem last time was that they thought I was hiding it to do them harm.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Xellos gushed. “Then you’ll be driven out right away and won’t have to worry about having formed attachments to a place.”

“It’ll work this time,” Filia insisted. “Or next time,” she admitted. “Or some time. But we’ll find a place for us.”

“Well,” Xellos admitted hesitantly, “you don’t really have any other options since you’ve snootily shot down both my all-too-generous invitation and the prospect of cave-dwelling.”

He leaned his chin in his hand pensively and a funny thought seemed to strike him. “I suppose the human race is the last vestige of hope for community among the outcasts, rejects and oddballs of the world’s species,” he said, tilting his head toward her and her family of outcasts, rejects and oddballs.

“Then that must be why you spend so much time with Miss Lina and her friends,” Filia replied loftily.

That one hit him between the eyes. “Oh really?” he asked, patience a little strained. “And what makes you think I’m an oddball?”

“Well, just look at you,” Filia said as though it was self-evident.

Xellos treated her to his ‘I just swallowed a bug’ smile. He probably wasn’t aware, but whenever he was annoyed his hair seemed to react to humidity more than normal.

“Oh, well thank you ever so much for that lovely invitation into your family of outcasts,” Xellos said, voice thronging with bittersweetness.

“I wasn’t inviting you!” Filia said crossly. “Just because you’re weird even for a monster doesn’t mean you should get to stay with me.”

“Ah, but Filia, shouldn’t someone in your position be a little more accepting?” he asked.

“No,” she decided instantly. “Why don’t you just go back to bothering Miss Lina and leave me alone?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“But Miss Lina’s not as fun as you,” he simpered.

She made an exasperated sound. “The meaning of my existence is not to make fun for you!”

“Well, perhaps not the sole meaning,” he allowed playfully.

If she’d scowled at him any harder her eyebrows would’ve switched sides. “I don’t know what you’ve been led to think, but you are not the center of the universe,” she glowered, and, because he looked like he was about to make a comment, she added: “or the center of my universe.”

“Well… I suppose not exactly,” Xellos agreed reluctantly. “We just sort of,” he twirled a finger around in the air absentminded, “orbit around each other.”

Filia was not sure whether to shout at him, turn away from him, or, oddly enough, blush at him. Instead she just muttered something about egomaniac demons and stoked the fire.

Xellos watched her pile more fuel onto the fire and let out a sigh that sounded very satisfied indeed. “So,” he asked, “what town were you planning on getting run out of next?” he asked.

Filia began idly stripping the bark off of a spare twig for want of anything better to do. “I haven’t decided yet,” she answered, not giving his opinion of her prospects the dignity of a response. “I think… maybe I’ll stop by Seyruun first and visit Miss Amelia. I’ve wanted to visit her for awhile and this seems like the perfect time.”

“Quite perfect,” Xellos agreed. “Having lost most of your merchandise, you’ll need something of an advance before you can plunk anything down on a new shop to recoup your losses. And someone as stubbornly good-natured as Miss Amelia is the perfect person to ask for a loan,” he added in his you-silly-dragon-your-motives-are-laid-bare-before-me voice.

“Which I would pay back,” she shot back a little too quickly.

“Of course you would,” Xellos humored her. “Now,” he said, leaning back on his hands and nodding at her sleeping companions, “don’t you think you ought to get some sleep too? Seyruun is a fair distance away, even if you fly, and I’ve seen you without the benefit of tea in the morning. It’s not a pretty sight.”

Filia scowled at him again, but it was half-hearted. The truth was she was exhausted. Arguing with Xellos had perked her up, as it always did for some strange reason, but she was running out of credit with her body and the suggestion of sleep sounded like a good one… even though it was from Xellos.

She curled up in the grass with her back turned to him and tried to make herself comfortable with just her hat for a pillow. “You’d better keep a good watch,” she warned him sternly.

“I always do,” he said quietly.

And so Filia drifted off to sleep, blanketed in the warm glow of the fire as the priest sitting across from her drummed his fingers against the turf to a patient rhythm that she did not recognize. And though for miles around them the infuriated villagers searched the forest and paths until their torches burnt out, they never found the circle of firelight where the non-humans lay.

 

[Skiyomi]

Theme #29.

No One Has to Know. Rated PG.

Sleep had been hard to come by ever since Filia joined up with Lina’s group for a second time. Being away from home and work even for the short time that her errand would take was nerve-wracking. Was Val doing alright without her? Did he miss her? Was he doing all his homework? Did he get his thumb stuck in the faucet again? Were Jillas and Gravos taking good care of him? And what about her shop? The questions mounted, and she’d have no way of knowing the answers until she returned home—likely to find that her domestic world had kept on turning just fine without her.

Insomnia drove her ever more frequently from her bed and to the lounges and lobbies of the inns, where she’d have a calming cup of tea to try to sooth herself into a more slumber-friendly frame of mind. It didn’t help that she’d drawn the short straw again that night and had to share a bed with Lina. Sleepwalking is one thing, but sleepkickboxing is another thing entirely. She rubbed her bruised side ruefully and spared a minute of sympathy for Gourry whenever he and Lina finally decided to get married. When she’d commented upon this to Xellos (after receiving absolutely no sympathy for her Lina-inflicted bruises) he’d cheerfully speculated to her that because of that fact Gourry would probably be forced to tie Lina to the bed for, as he put it, “completely non-kink-related reasons.” He had a filthy mind.

Xellos. Unfortunately for her, insomnia wasn’t her only companion these past few nights. Presumably he didn’t sleep, so she always ended up running into him in the lobbies of the inns late at night. The stupid monster was always pestered her with completely unreasonable questions like: “Are you having trouble sleeping?” and “Would you mind telling me where you got that cup of tea?”

So it didn’t come as any surprise to her when she looked up from reading the newspaper to see him standing before her in the mostly empty lobby. He nodded to the open space on the sofa next to her. “Is this seat taken?” he asked.

She glared, but didn’t even do him the courtesy of directing the glare at him, and plopped the newspaper down next to her. “Yes,” she said harshly.

“That’s not very polite, Filia,” he said, stooping over to move the newspaper. “Nighthawks should stick together.”

Filia made a hmmph sound as he sat down next to her, and if you want to talk about politeness he was a little closer than was polite.

Too much time. She spent way too much time in close company with someone who was her most detested enemy. Part of it she could blame on Xellos himself. He liked annoying her, that much was obvious, and he knew full well that keeping himself close to her annoyed her. He didn’t seem to have respect for anybody’s personal space when it came to that. Perhaps he just liked the discomfort it brought… and more than that, if he took a step forward then all he needed was for her to take a step back and it was like she was admitting that she was weaker than him.

She used to recoil from him, but every time she did so she felt a tiny pinprick of humiliation. Those added up. As soon as she realized that it all amounted to a contest that she did not want to lose she ceased her retreat. Now she didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him know that he’d rattled her. Let him be the first one to shrink away!

Of course, some of the things that drew them together didn’t seem to be manipulated by Xellos at all… but they did seem manipulated by… oh, Filia wasn’t sure. Perhaps by a vengeful god with a sick sense of humor; or by the almighty forces of irony; or by whatever it was in her that compelled her toward bizarre, awkward, Xellos-related situations; or by gravity. Even surprisingly strong gusts of wind were suspect—that’s right, the universe was literally throwing them at each other.

But Filia was determined to endure it all. She could handle Xellos’s teasing and her own flair for landing herself in strange situations. He wouldn’t make her lose her cool.

“I must say,” he commented, turning to her, “I don’t think the lack of sleep is doing anything for your temperament.”

He wouldn’t make her lose her co…

“Or your complexion,” he added, leaning closer to scan her face. “Those are some nasty dark circles.”

He wouldn’t make her… aw, screw it.

“What do you care?” she asked, shoving her face just a few inches from his. Let’s see how he likes someone being in his face! she thought violently. He thinks he can make me shrink away? Ha! I don’t retreat, I advance!

And then something delightful happened. Xellos tilted his head back and away from her, adjusting the distance between them to one that was more conversational and less confrontational. “Can’t a person express concern over a companion’s well-being?” he asked.

A rush of triumph surged through Filia. She didn’t think it would actually work, but she’d made him flinch back!

“A person can,” Filia said, moving toward him and taking the distance back, “but you can’t.”

He frowned and drew himself back once more. “Now that is just not fair. You rage when I treat you cordially and you rage when I don’t. How can I win?”

“You can’t,” Filia countered, bearing down on him once more. “You lose.”

Filia had to admit, she could see why Xellos played his little games with proximity. It provided more advantage in an argument than she’d thought it would. Being able to make Xellos back away was ridiculously empowering and leant an extra bite to her comebacks.

“Well then,” Xellos said, slipping peaceably away from her once more, “I suppose the only thing I can do is treat you honestly.”

“Honestly?” Filia scoffed, moving forward once more. “You don’t even know what that means!”

“Don’t I?” he asked.

“No you—” Filia stopped mid-movement.

There was something wrong here; something in the tone of his voice and the curve of his lips as he smiled froze her sense of success. Something in that mess of signals made her wonder if he’d actually been retreating… or just reeling her in? He hadn’t moved back this time and their faces were much closer together than she intended them to be. He looked at her with eyes that sharpened to challenge her.

She swayed dizzily. Her every uncertain breath fell on his mouth. She felt like she was going to fall. Something was pulling her. It was like gravity, but it wasn’t. She wobbled forward and her lips brushed against his chin. She lifted her head, ostensibly to pull herself away, but simply met his lips instead.

And that’s… all it was. Just her lips accidentally brushing against his. A mere… lip brushing incident. Not a kiss at all, right? How long can a brush be?

Filia pulled herself away after probably-longer-than-a-brush-can-conceivably-be. Some sense must have reinsinuated itself into her life because the first thing she said was: “Oh my GOD! What have we done?!”

Xellos didn’t budge, his expression oscillating between gloating and thoughtful. “I could ask you that—but I think I know the answer.”

“No, no, no, no, no!” Filia said, shaking her head wildly.

“You kissed me.”

“No! No I didn’t!” Filia denied. “I mean… alright, I did,” she took it back a wretched second later. “But only because you tricked me!” she said, pointing at him.

“I tricked you,” Xellos repeated, profoundly unimpressed. “And just how did I trick you?”

Filia was at a loss to explain. It was hard to tell where Xellos’s mind games ended and her own paranoia began. She settled for crossing her arms and saying: “You know how you did it so I don’t have to explain it to you.”

Xellos grinned. “It sounds like you tricked yourself into kissing me.”

Filia let out an exasperated sound. “That part doesn’t matter anyway,” she said because her ‘you tricked me’ defense wasn’t that strong. Her only evidence was ‘you moved away from me!’ which he’d probably cast as evidence against him tricking her. Best to move on to more important matters. “Look, the point is… the point is that whatever just happened was all a colossal mistake!”

“Whoops,” Xellos said, not-so-helpfully.

“Yes,” she said coldly. “‘Whoops.’ So the best thing we can do now is to… to forget it ever happened and go back to how we always treat each other. Just… just sweep it under the rug.”

Xellos thought for a moment before finally saying: “I suppose you’re right. Let’s just forget it then.”

Filia stared at him for a moment in helpless bewilderment. Finally she exploded with: “How can you even say that?!”

“Well it was your suggestion,” Xellos answered, amused.

“That’s beside the point!” Filia snapped, near tears. “You honestly think we could just go back to the way things were? You could just forget about…” She choked. “About that? You heartless beast!”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Xellos repeated. “If sweeping it under the rug doesn’t agree with you, then need I remind you that there is another option available?”

The waterworks stopped as the dull weight of exactly what Xellos was talking about dropped into her mind. “No. No. No! How could you even suggest such a thing? That’s beyond wrong!”

Xellos shrugged his shoulders. “A lecture on decorum from the dragon girl who just kissed a monster?”

“But…” Filia tried, not really sure where she was going. “I didn’t mean…”

“What did you mean?” Xellos asked flatly. “And what do you want to do about it?”

Filia folded her hands onto her lap and look somber. “…If my parents knew…” She closed her eyes ruefully. “…They’d roll over in their graves.”

“But they don’t know,” Xellos said simply, “and the dead are always somewhat behind on news, so no cemetery gymnastics will be required.”

Before Filia could lash out at him for not showing proper respect for the dead he’d reached out a hand and put it gently on her cheek. “If you’re going to make a decision then don’t make one based on your reputation, which, by the way, hasn’t been in great shape for awhile now,” he said softly. “You know me well enough to understand that I can keep a secret.”

Filia stared back into his eyes and for that moment everything he was saying sounded so easy—as easy as falling into that kiss with him had been. Easy and inevitable.

He smiled, centimetering closer to her and stroking the side of her face. “No one has to know about us,” he whispered.

Filia slowly leaned closer into him and then abruptly shot backwards, slapping away his hand. “What do you mean ‘no one has to know?!’” she demanded. “What about them?” she asked, pointing to a late night poker game going on at the card table in the corner of the lobby. “They saw us kiss!”

The mercenaries and card sharks who had been watching the drama unfold for the last ten minutes without paying their cards the least bit of attention abruptly turned back to their game. One of them whistled nonchalantly.

“Well…” Xellos began reluctantly, “I’m sure they could make some sharp guesses if they saw us leave together—but they wouldn’t know for sure. Anyway, we don’t know them so why should it matter?”

Filia crossed her arms and glared at him. “Are you telling me that you wouldn’t tell your bosses if we did that?”

Xellos grimaced. “I suppose technically I’d be obliged to report something of that nature to Lord Beastmaster,” he admitted. “But if it makes you feel any better, that would not be my favorite report to give.”

“Aha! And what about Miss Lina and the others,” Filia added, eyeing him suspiciously. “Do you really think that we could keep something like this a secret from them?”

Xellos gave it some thought. “They can be quite observant sometimes, but honestly I think you would’ve already blabbed to Miss Lina or Miss Amelia before they could figure it out on their own. You’re not as good at keeping secrets as I am.” He gave it some more thought. “And then I suppose Mister Gourry and Mister Zelgadis would find out from them and we’d have to… I don’t know, exchange high fives over the incident,” he added, though somewhat doubtfully. Gourry could always be counted on for a high five, but the same could not be said for Zelgadis. The bro code was in sadly short supply in their group.

“And I suppose your little beastmen family would find out too if we kept on seeing each other,” Xellos went on, tugging at the thread some more. “Unless of course,” he added, eyebrows moving in a way that Filia did not approve of, “you were just planning to use me for one wild, passionate night of carnality and then callously discard me.”

Filia scoffed, partially because she felt that that should be her line. “So when you say ‘no one has to know,’” she summed up, “what you really mean is everyone has to know!”

“I suppose I do,” Xellos admitted. “Is this a problem?”

“Don’t you think it is?” Filia screeched back.

“Can’t you look at it this way, Filia?” he asked, taking her hand. “Some things are just too important to keep a secret.”

…And if you want to know what happened next, after Filia argued and Xellos presented counterarguments; after Xellos attempted to negotiate; after a change of setting was suggested; after Filia admitted that she was getting tired, but didn’t want to go back to her own room to get sleep-punched by Lina again; and after Xellos made her an offer that she could refuse, but he hoped she wouldn’t… well, you can ask anyone you’d like. Because everyone knows.

 

[Skiyomi]

Theme #95.

Everyone Needs a Hobby. Rated G.

It all started because Xellos needed a place to keep his books. He didn’t exactly subscribe to the notion that knowledge was power, but knew all too well that knowledge was the best way to leverage power. Not only that, but he also knew the location of every five-star ice cream parlor in the entire world. That was something worth bragging about.

He supposed that he could’ve kept them on the astral side but… well… books seem to sort of belong on shelves. And he didn’t like reading on the astral side anyway. The constantly shifting light sources made the prospect rather annoying.

And what is a house but a place to store shelves?

So he’d gotten a space of his own—not to live in, but to keep things in. It worked out well not only for books but for any items that he had to… eh… ‘confiscate’ because they were too dangerous for human hands, but were not to be destroyed. Plus he could read mid-air without arousing any suspicion.

After awhile the place seemed rather empty so he’d started picking up some furniture to fill it—just for the look of the thing. It was good quality stuff too. Many a burning palace had lost its antique chairs and tapestries, though not to the flames. Xellos didn’t like waste.

What he’d built up was, he thought, a fairly well decorated space. Some of it was a little useless—but at least it looked nice. Unfortunately he could, at that moment, see none of his valuable, ill-gotten furniture acquisitions. He was, however, getting a great view of the red plush carpet.

“You may rise,” said a female voice that was all authority.

Xellos leaned on his staff to pull himself from his kneeling position. Lord Beastmaster, another monster who knew the value of cutting out a corner of real-space for oneself—was looking around the room with cool interest.

“So, this is where you’ve been living,” she said.

Xellos shrugged. “Not ‘living’ as such, Lord Beastmaster,” he said. “It’s more for storage and writing reports.”

“Ah,” Zelas said. “So if you’re not living here then you’ve been living with that Filia girl you’ve mentioned with disturbing frequency?”

Xellos winced. When Lord Beastmaster got to asking questions it was like a tickle on an open wound. “No,” he said carefully. “I simply drop by her home when I have no other matters to attend to. Occasionally,” he added quickly.

“Occasionally,” Zelas repeated.

Xellos nodded fervently.

“Xellos?” Lord Beastmaster asked patiently.

“Yes, Lord Beastmaster?”

“There are forty-eight vases in this room alone. Have you noticed?” she asked.

The inconvenient fact sunk into Xellos’s head. “Are there that many, really?” he asked with slathered-on innocence.

“You put them here,” Lord Beastmaster said without rancor but with a deep and dangerous certainty, “you’d know.”

“Well…” Xellos tried. “Well,” he said again and added a little laugh, “is forty-eight vases really that many when you get right down to it?”

“Forty-eight vases in one room is an undeniably fanatical amount,” Lord Beastmaster stated. “Explain.”

Xellos struggled. In his vast repertoire of excuses there was nothing about suspiciously large pottery collections. “I… well, I enjoy art is all.”

“Particularly vases?” Lord Beastmaster asked gesturing to a vase with a kitschy cat pattern painted onto it.

“Oh certainly,” Xellos agreed.

Lord Beastmaster passed a series of small vases on the window sill. One said ‘home’ another said ‘is’ another ‘where’, ‘the’, ‘heart’, and ‘is.’ “How fortunate that you should suddenly discover your latent fondness for vases at the exact moment that the pretty dragon girl you met in your travels with Lina Inverse starts selling them.”

Xellos was not dumb enough to try ‘I hadn’t noticed she was pretty.’ He was, however, dumb enough to say: “That was very lucky for me.”

Lord Beastmaster gave him a look that made him question whether his luck would hold out much longer. “You wouldn’t happen to have a collection of maces somewhere in this house now would you?”

“I’m afraid not,” Xellos said pleasantly, but if he’d been a human sweat would have been pouring down the back of his neck. “Filia won’t sell me any weaponry.”

Zelas raised an eyebrow, a white painted vase with ceramic roses around the neck between her fingers. “Does she think you need them?”

“You’d have to ask her,” Xellos said and instantly regretted it. A confrontation between Lord Beastmaster and Filia did not seem destined to end well.

Zelas nodded. “And… those flowers on the table?” she asked. “The ones in yet another vase?”

Xellos grimaced. “…Snapdragons,” he said, his voice coming from a long way off.

“Yellow snapdragons too, I noticed,” Lord Beastmaster commented.

“They may be, I admit, rather unfortunately named, but they also add a much needed pop of color to the room,” Xellos tried desperately.

“I see,” Lord Beastmaster said, moving on. “And this… pile of rubble right here?”

“Oh, that. That’s a vase that Filia threw at my head,” Xellos answered.

Lord Beastmaster rubbed her temples, her patience rather strained at this point. “Why do you have this?”

“Well,” Xellos struck out, not a hundred percent sure of the answer himself, “I… with the experimental vein running through the art world at the moment I thought it might turn out to be a rather valuable pile of rubble.”

Zelas stared at him.

“It’s an example of deconstruction, you see,” Xellos finished.

Lord Beastmaster dug out her pipe, lit it without the aid of matches, and took a long, long drag before finally saying: “This Filia—the one you’re constantly claiming to dislike, usually when that fact is not relevant in the least to our conversation—you realize you’re making her rich by buying all these, don’t you?”

Xellos mumbled something.

“What was that?” Zelas asked, leaning forward. Her hairspray-is-for-lesser-beings look never once fell out of place.

“I… I have a frequent shopper’s card,” Xellos said, evidently embarrassed. “So I do get a discount.”

In the silence that followed that statement a spark fell from Lord Beastmaster’s pipe and onto the carpet where it sizzled gently, producing a small flame. She stepped on the newborn flame, smothering it, but her expression was strained, as though she’d been debating the action.

She looked up from the suppressed fire and at her only servant. “Is this going to become a problem?” she asked. “Is this already a problem?”

Xellos cast his eyes down. “Everyone needs a hobby, Lord Beastmaster,” he said. There might have been sulk in his voice if it hadn’t been pushed out by fear.

“Very true,” Lord Beastmaster allowed. She’d been cultivating quite a few herself—all of which were strongly discouraged by the Seyruun Surgeon General. “But Xellos,” she said, “this hobby of yours really has nothing to do with collecting vases, does it?”

“…Not at all, Lord Beastmaster,” Xellos was finally forced to admit, his smile a rather mangled, beaten thing at this point. “Not at all.”

Lord Beastmaster tossed the miniature vase she’d been holding in the air. When she caught it she grinned, incisors exposed. “Good,” she said in a satisfied tone. “I thought they were a little frou-frou for your tastes anyway.”

She set the ceramic paperweight down on the table. “Everything’s in order then,” she said with the air of one who’s completed a successful inspection.

“It… is?” Xellos asked weakly.

“At least an acceptable amount of disorder—though if this dragon pursuing hobby of yours gets too much for you, you might want to take up something a little less dangerous… like lightning charming or breaking your own fingers.”

 

[Skiyomi]

Here's theme #14. And my 25th Summer Nights oneshot!

Dusk. PG.

The sky was in the last throes of sunset—orange only remained in faint traces and close to the ground. Day was all but dead and the eventide was only just flowing in. For the moment the world was at a point in between. What it was exactly at that point had been a matter of heated discussion between the dragon and the demon as they walked the lantern lit path through the park. Filia had called it twilight, but Xellos seemed to think that it couldn’t be proper twilight until the first stars showed up. Filia had never heard of such a thing and demanded to know what he’d call it. Xellos suggested gloaming which Filia instantly shot down because she felt it sounded ‘stupid.’ Xellos actually seemed a little offended on behalf of the word. In the end, they’d decided to call it dusk and leave it at that. Dusk was all about happy mediums anyway.

Filia was grumbling—not really saying anything, but general displeasure radiated off of her. All she’d wanted was a little fresh air, a little time in the cool almost-night, and at least, at least a little time away from Xellos. But of course she couldn’t even have that. Xellos knows when he’s not wanted, and his reaction is always to invite himself in anyway.

She stopped walking abruptly and took a seat on one of the park benches, not bothering to ask him if he’d like a rest or not. He’d sat down next to her with a: “You’re not out of breath already, are you, Filia?”

Filia sniffed. “Hardly. I only wanted to just… enjoy the park for a little while. Though I’d enjoy it a lot more,” she’d added aggressively, “if you’d sit on one of the other benches.”

“Ah, but then I wouldn’t have this view,” he said, pointing with his staff upwards.

Filia followed his gesture with her eyes toward the lantern pole where one end of a large spider web was attached, stretching like a net over to a tree. The flickering candlelight from the lantern made the strands visible against the sky, so it appeared to rise like a wispy, mildly fly-blackened moon. In the middle of it glittered spider. It may have been red or it may have only looked red in the firelight.

Filia wrinkled her nose. “Disgusting,” she said, crossing her legs irritably.

Xellos looked at her curiously. “Don’t tell me that you’re one of those people who are more afraid of spiders than death.”

“I’m not afraid of spiders,” Filia countered harshly. “I just hate them—both the eight-legged and the two-legged kind,” she lobbed in his direction.

Xellos carefully ignored the barb on that statement and instead just gestured vaguely at the bug. “Are you telling me that you have no admiration for the spider? Its laudable economy of effort? The beauty of the silken traps it weaves? Its acrobatic grace and its force of design?”

“Absolutely not,” Filia said certainly.

Xellos gave the web a thoughtful look and then shrugged. “I thought it was a pretty looking web—especially with the light shining on it like that.”

“It’s used to trap things,” Filia said vehemently, mad, but not particularly focused on actual spiders at this point.

“Pretty things usually are,” Xellos observed. “How could you trap someone with something they didn’t want?”

“You’d know all about that,” Filia said darkly.

He gave her a grim smile. “You think I’m a spider?”

“Well if all eight shoes fit!” Filia said back.

“You were calling me a cockroach only this morning,” Xellos pointed out. “You need to get your bug-based comparisons straight.”

“You’re both,” Filia said sulkily.

“Fine then,” Xellos said, moving on, “if you have no admiration for the spider, then what about pity? Spiders are territorial and live solitary lives. Surely that’s cause for some sympathy.”

“They live solitary lives because if they’re too close together they eat each other,” Filia pointed out. “I’m not going to pity cannibals because they lose friends every time they get a snack attack! And they don’t hunt honestly. They use cheap tricks.”

“But Filia,” Xellos said, clucking his tongue. “Spiders are only being spiders. You can’t blame them for the lifestyle they were made to live.”

Filia was annoyed, partly at Xellos, partly because she wasn’t sure if he was making an excuse for spiders or for himself. If the latter was the case then he was fooling himself and deserved a punch in the face. “People have a choice,” she said.

Xellos chuckled darkly. “People like to think they have choices.”

That sentence fell like a heavy stone into the pool of their conversation. It was impossible to speak again until the ripples had faded.

“So why don’t you tell me about your choice, Filia,” Xellos went on. “Which would you rather be: the spider or the fly?”

Filia glared at him. She didn’t like either of her choices. She tilted her glare huffily away. “Neither,” she said. “I’d be a butterfly.”

“Oh?” Xellos answered, with barely contained amusement. “So you’d be a pretty fly? I’m afraid you’d only make a more attractive meal,” he said as a moth, the butterfly’s less gaudy cousin, flew into the spider’s web and flapped its glued wings pointlessly.

“Yes, but butterfly wings are toxic,” Filia answered in a know-it-all tone that she loved to use on Xellos and hated when he used it on her. “If you ate me you’d suffer for it.”

Xellos grimaced. “You know,” he said after awhile, “I believe you might well be a butterfly.”

“Fine by me,” Filia said smugly.

“Of course,” Xellos finally added thoughtfully, “I think that most of what butterflies do is flutter around and have sex. So either you’re not much of a Lepidopterist or I don’t know you as well as I’d like to.”

Filia made a profoundly displeased sound. She crossed her arms. “I’m changing my bug,” she announced.

“Fine then, go ahead,” Xellos said, smirking as he readied to attack her next option.

“I’ll be…” Filia began, but the answer was so simple, “a bee.”

Xellos opened his mouth to make some sort of smart comment, but then closed it, nodding slowly. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, I could see that. A flying, oversized, golden zealot. That works.”

Filia scoffed. “What makes a bee a zealot?” she demanded, not even touching the ‘oversized’ part.

“Well, they’re entirely focused on the hive—not themselves as individuals—and they’ll make any sacrifice in the name of the hive,” Xellos explained.

“But… but bees are also hard workers,” Filia pointed out, not willing to go into the tangled, bloody issue of sacrifices for the many.

“True,” Xellos agreed. “They work themselves to death. And as for your complaint about butterflies,” he added, somewhat gently, “while the queens are promiscuous, and the drones… well, that’s their entire purpose, at least you can take solace in the fact that the workers are chaste.”

“And bees are not defenseless,” Xellos added thoughtfully. “But using their last, best weapon means death…”

“You’re just bringing us farther and farther away from the point!” Filia cut through his thoughts. “This isn’t about insect comparisons—this is about spiders—it’s not even about real spiders,” she corrected herself. “It’s about deceivers, trap-builders, web-weavers,” she added venomously.

Xellos curled his gloved fingers around the armrest of the bench. The lantern lights seemed to grow brighter as the sky grew darker. “I don’t see why you can’t at least appreciate a good trap. And in any case, you needn’t worry. I’m not spinning any webs tonight to catch you.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with me if you caught me,” Filia said haughtily.

She could hear Xellos gritting his teeth from next to her. “I’m sure I’d manage to figure something out,” he said edgily.

“Hmmph.”

The spider had finished mummifying its catch and had returned to the center of the web to let its dinner decay into a gooey liquid.

“What about you, Filia?” Xellos asked speculatively. “Have you ever spun a web and set it out in the gl—dusk to wait for your quarry?”

“Of course not,” Filia answered, offended. “I don’t manipulate people like you do.”

He looked at her carefully as though searching for a tell. “You believe that, don’t you?” he asked softly.

“It’s the truth!”

Xellos shook his head. “You don’t spin with malice and forethought, but whether mindful or not you’re quite adept at wrapping your gossamer strands around your victims. I know.”

“What are you talking about?” Filia demanded, taken aback.

“Yes,” Xellos said, almost to himself, “I think you wouldn’t be nearly as good at it if you were actually trying. That’s the real charm of it.”

Filia stood up irritably. “Are you just going to sit there and mutter about bugs all night?”

“I suppose not,” Xellos said, rising and trailing after her. “We ought to be getting home so that you can wrap me up and eat me.”

“I am not a spider!” Filia shrieked.

“I’ve seen you with fangs,” Xellos said disbelievingly.

“You scum! If anyone’s a murderous night creature, it’s you!”

Xellos pointed at her mouth, not considering that under the circumstances he was putting his finger in great peril. “There they are. The fangs are out.”

“YOU!”

 

[MGOShockWave]

I like it Ski D: You can read mine once I am done btw I thought it was only the 1st page then i thought rest were comments then saw it wasn't jesus you can write xD

 

[Skiyomi]

XD Thanks. It's my lofty goal to do all one hundred themes someday.

 

[Skiyomi]

Here's #86.

My Fancy Way of Saying Hello. Rated G.

Filia opened the door to the kiln and took a deep breath. It was cool now, but she could still smell the smoky mixture of earth and flame. She reached in and felt the ceramic surface of the piece within. She looked it over careful, spinning it gently. So often a promising vase could be ruined in its trial by fire. Here, though, all seemed to be well. There was certainly no warping, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she had confirmed that the new paint she’d bought had held up under the heat. She smiled. All that was left was to put this on the shelf, where it would surely find a home when her shop doors opened the next morning.

She lifted the vase from its warm and cozy mortar womb, hugged it to her chest, and carefully shut the oven door. She turned around and walked two steps—maybe three.

“Salutations, Filia.”

Crash.

“Oh dear,” commented Filia’s saluter. “How very clumsy of you.”

Filia was already crouched down on the floor grasping pottery shards in a kind of desperate rage. “Xellos!” she shrieked at the figure who could’ve only materialized by magic or by hiding in the back of her kiln. “This is all your fault!”

Xellos arched an eyebrow. “Is it my fault that you scare easily?”

Filia was still gripping a pottery shard like a dagger when she rose. She came back with a red-faced and sullen: “You don’t scare me. You just startled me, that’s all.”

“Forgive me,” Xellos said, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. “Is it my fault that you startle easily?”

“Anyone would be startled if someone just randomly appeared behind them,” Filia countered. She tossed down the shard on the floor with the rest. “But you always do that. It’s downright rude.”

“I thought I greeted you quite politely,” Xellos replied. “I believe you’re the one between the two of us that can’t seem to master basic etiquette.”

Filia crossed her arms. “It’s not polite to wait around until people are carrying something heavy or fragile before you materialize right behind them. It doesn’t matter if you say your phony ‘salutations’; you might as well say ‘boo!’ It’s mean-spirited and don’t pretend it’s anything else, you trash!”

“Well, then it was poorly received,” Xellos commented sourly. If he’d lied to her he’d have blamed her for hearing it wrong. “So why don’t you tell me how someone mannerly enough to resort to name-calling two-minutes into a conversation thinks she should properly be greeted?”

“Polite people use the door,” Filia spat.

Xellos hesitated. “…But doors are so unnecessary,” he replied with the slightest hint of fretfulness in his voice.

“They are not!” Filia shot back. She scowled at him. “I can teleport some too, y’know,” she reminded him, “but I don’t just randomly appear in people’s living rooms. There have to be certain boundaries.”

Xellos shook his head, making little clucking noises with his tongue as he did so. “But we don’t operate under those boundaries, Filia. That’s not our procedure.” He placed a hand on his chest. “I greet you by rising from your shadow and talking in your ear, and you greet me by dropping something on the floor, screeching my name and then accusing me of something ridiculous. I see no compelling reason to change any of this.”

“You wouldn’t,” Filia answered darkly. “And I’m not greeting you when I do that.”

“Really?” Xellos asked thoughtfully. “Then I suppose you’re rather rude as well, by your own standard,” he concluded.

Filia couldn’t really argue against that, but that was alright because she knew very well that Xellos was no good and that bad people deserve bad manners. “Maybe I’d greet you politely if you greeted me politely,” she said with a self-righteous sniff.

Xellos mulled over this in his mimed sort of way, cupping his chin in his gloved hand. He grinned at her. “I suppose it’s never too late to start again,” he said, and then disappeared.

She stared at the place he’d just been standing for a moment, then groaned and resolved not to entrench herself in his nonsense. She walked over to one of the shelves where the broom and dustpan were leaning.

There was a knock at the door. Filia froze for a minute, her gaze fixed on the side-door. She unfroze, muttered a word she wasn’t particularly proud of knowing, and continued toward her cleaning implements as if she hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary.

By the time the second knock struck she was already making her way back to the pile of rubbish that had once been a promising new vase. By the third knock she’d begun clearing up the mess. By the fourth knock Jillas had raced into the room.

“Oi’ll get it,” he declared running for the door.

“No!” Filia whisper-shouted at him, holding an arm up and signaling wildly.

Jillas gave her a puzzled look as the fifth knock struck. “But, Boss,” he began, “what about…?”

“Trust me,” Filia said heavily, “it’s no one we want to talk to.”

Jillas gave her a knowing nod. “A salesman, right?”

The sixth knock sounded and Filia glared at the door. “Much worse than a salesman.”

A fresh look of horror suffused Jillas’s vulpine features. His hand strayed to his belt where he’d once kept grenades before Filia had requested that he not go so heavily armed. “You don’t mean…” he began.

Filia nodded darkly.

“Tax-collectors?” Jillas finished ominously.

Filia ceased her nodding. “No, it’s just—”

“You ignored me,” Xellos accused, popping into existence predictably inside Filia’s personal space bubble.

Filia sprung away from him; not to a conversational distance, but certainly to an argumentative distance. “So what?” she retorted.

“I wouldn’t say that ignoring someone counts as a polite greeting,” he pointed out with damnable reasonableness, though not without a certain irked increase in grip on his staff. “And I was so very courteous to you this time around.”

“I only said I might be polite to you,” Filia countered, exploiting her loop-hole. “I didn’t say I actually would. And it’s not courteous if you only play at manners and then just barge in and do whatever you want when it doesn’t work out the way you want it.”

“Well, it’s obvious to me that rudeness is the only thing you respond to, Filia,” he said, raising his index finger.

Filia’s fingers twitched; they felt magnetically drawn to Xellos’s neck. “My only response is to tell you to leave my house this instant or I’ll start testing the maces on you!” she snarled.

Xellos shrugged carelessly. “But it’s a response nonetheless, Filia,” he reasoned. “I’m not picky as long as I get one.”

“You—!” Filia began, incensed.

“Umm... ‘ey, Boss,” Jillas cut in.

The corners of Xellos’s lips turned downward in displeasure. Because of that interruption he’d be left in permanent suspense as to what Filia had been about to call him. It could’ve easily been the generic ‘monster’ or ‘demon’; likely her usual ‘raw garbage’ or a variant thereof; but it also could’ve been cockroach… snake… beast… devilishly handsome gadabout… Yes, he decided, let’s go with that last one.

“What?” Filia demanded, her anger still at high-levels when she turned to Jillas.

“It’s just…” Jillas began, “is this guy bothering you, Boss?”


Filia sunk her head into her hand in frustration. “Always and every day,” she said harshly.

“I’m not here every day,” Xellos pointed out.

“Always and every day,” Filia reaffirmed.

“If that’s ‘ow it is…” Jillas began resolutely, turning to face Xellos with a steely one-eyed look. This was the same person who’d threatened Lord Val for such a long time and had now turned his negative attention toward his new boss. He gulped. He knew he didn’t stand much of a chance against someone who’d given even Lord Val a run for his money, but… some things just have to be done. He wasn’t about to let anyone antagonize his boss. He lowered his voice. “…Oi’m going to ‘ave to ask you to leave,” he finished.

Xellos rested his head against his hand and chuckled. “Oh, please, do,” he urged. “Go on and ask.”

“Don’t bother asking him,” Filia counseled her loyal fox, throwing Xellos a disgusted look. “Talking to Xellos is impossible.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Xellos returned slowly, as if he felt Filia’s assessment rather unfair. “I’m sure I wouldn’t insist on staying here if I felt myself prompted to leave.”

Filia snorted.

Xellos leaned in closer to her and gave her the kind of look an ingratiating teacher might give to encourage a dull-witted student. “You just have to ask the right way.”

“What’s the ‘right’ way?” Filia asked skeptically.

“Well,” Xellos said, grinning, “we’ve already discovered how you and I say hello to each other; now we just need to find a way to say good-bye to each other in our own, special way.”

“And what way would that be?” Filia asked again, grinding her teeth together.

“You’re actually following the procedure I want us to adopt pretty well so far,” Xellos observed cheerfully. “First off, you stop ordering me out of your house and grudgingly accept my presence, which you’ve done already.”

“‘Grudgingly’ is right,” Filia muttered. How very like Xellos to only take it as his cue to leave when people stop asking him.

“Then I give you my good-bye,” Xellos continued as if this interruption hadn’t occurred. “And then,” his eyes flicked open and he surveyed her conceitedly, “you beg me to come back to you.”

“What?” Filia demanded incredulously. “There’s not even the slightest chance that I’d actually ask you to—”

He leaned in closer and kissed her on the cheek.

“Bye, Filia,” he half-sang at the still stunned dragon before he disappeared from view.

Filia’s mouth hung open in shocked stillness for a few seconds, blood rising in her face and making it almost glow red. Then finally she clamped her mouth shut and clenched both her fists.

“Xellos!” she yelled into the empty space he’d occupied. “Come back here, you creep! What makes you think you can do something like that and then just run away?! You won’t get away with this!”

Jillas, for his part, stared from his boss—raging and stamping her feet, on the verge of a tantrum and still yelling, red-faced at her departed guest—to the smugly vacant space in front of her.

“What the ‘ell was all that about?” he wondered to no one in particular.

 

[Skiyomi]

Theme #91.

Hatred and Loathing. Rated PG.

Filia sat on the very edge of the stone perimeter around a bubbling fountain. She didn’t want to get her cloak wet, but the cool spray in the air felt nice as it hit her face. The fountain was tucked away from the crowded center of the town she and the others had stopped in and was surrounded mostly by cafes and restaurants thin on customers in the middle of the afternoon. She couldn’t have possibly staked out a better space to relax between the soothing wash of the water, the sunshine, and the far-enough-removed hum of shoppers beyond the square. Nevertheless as she looked into the coin flecked bottom of the fountain, she couldn’t help feeling dissatisfied.

“Maybe,” she said sourly to herself, “it’s because Miss Lina took the last of my money and ran off to that all-you-can-eat buffet, so I don’t even have a single coin left to make a wish with.”

Her hand strayed to the satchel that had once contained the meager salary the temple had provided her with and now only contained lint and a bit of quartz she’d found on the ground and absentmindedly picked up. But what would I wish for, she wondered, if I had a coin?

Well, she couldn’t help but realize, there were a lot of things she could wish for. First and foremost she could wish that Miss Lina, Mister Gourry, and Miss Amelia would look up from their culinary tour and realize that they couldn’t afford to sample every item in every restaurant in every town they stopped in, mend their ways, become fiscally responsible, and perhaps take up some sort of ascetic philosophy that meant eating only very tiny amounts.

…But that was downright unlikely.

She could wish that Mister Zelgadis would quit threatening librarians at sword point until they showed him their rarest books so that she could browse the serials at her leisure without having to worry about being kicked out of places. She could wish that the temple in its theoretically infinite wisdom would give her more money to fund this high-priority mission. She could wish for strength to avert the threatened destruction of the world. She could wish for a clue to the next Dark Star weapon. She could wish to find out whether or not what Valgaav had said about her people was true.

She could wish to find out what Xellos was up to in all of this. She could wish to find out where exactly he was right now and what he was doing. She could wish that he’d stop being so obnoxious all the time. She could wish that if he was going to go away then he’d at least give them fair warning about it and tell when he’d be back. She could wish that he’d quit with that high and mighty attitude all the time and stop making it seem like everything was always her fault. She could wish that he wouldn’t always have that insufferable grin on his face. She could wish that something terrible would happen to his hair. She could—

She paused and unclenched her teeth. That was… probably too much wishing about Xellos anyway. But still! It irked her! Wasn’t everything else they had to deal with bad enough without having him popping unexpectedly in and as unexpectedly out without even doing them the courtesy of letting them know anything? She didn’t know how he did it, but sometimes she thought Xellos managed to be more annoying when he was gone than when he was actually around.

Not that she wanted him back or anything. It was just… was a little consistency and communication really too much to ask?

“Miss, might I have an extra lemon wedge and a glass of ice?” an ingratiating voice from nearby asked.

Filia whipped her head around with the same whoosh as a pipe being swung through the air.

There he was! He must’ve known they were in this town but he was taking his sweet time before he let them know he was back—just kicking back on a café patio drinking an iced tea without telling them a single thing!

She stormed over. “Xellos!” she shrieked.

“Oh, hello there, Filia,” he said mildly as she approached his table. “Could I treat you to a drink? I’m sure the dragon race hasn’t parted with anything more than the absolute minimum amount to cover your expenses, and I can afford to be a little less miserly even for the likes of you.”

“Shut up,” she ordered him, but because she was thirsty she turned toward the (somewhat frustrated looking) waitress and said: “I’ll have a cup of cinnamon tea,” before sitting down across from the hated monster and directing her attention back toward him. “Don’t pretend you know anything about the financial policies of my people—and that’s beside the point anyway. Where have you been?”

Xellos smiled and took a drink from the thin black straw rising from his beverage. “That’s…” he began.

“Forget I asked,” Filia cut across him, denying him the pleasure of getting to say his trademarked phrase.

“Well, what did you expect, Filia?” he asked as the waitress came back with Xellos’s iced tea accoutrements. “Am I supposed to confess all my secrets to you? I didn’t know we’d gotten that close.”

“We’re not close,” Filia snapped. “We’ve never been close and we’ll never be close.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t doubt the mighty divination powers of a golden dragon,” Xellos said, leaving the extra items he’d asked for untouched—they’d only been requested because annoying the wait-staff was a little hobby of his, “but given your level of incompetence, I think I will anyway.”

Filia sputtered and fumed. She hated the mild-mannered way he answered her. She was ready to jump out of her skin, but he was replying to her comments like he was just taking his turn in a pleasant game that he had a clear advantage in. She lived for the moments when he was lost for a response, when a twitch fidgeted from under his temples, and when his hands unconsciously became fists. Those were too few and too far between though. Most of the time she’d have to hold herself back from tackling him and he’d just laugh at her.

What she wanted now was a comeback—something like the kind he threw at her without apparent effort. There’d be a pretence at manners with an undercurrent of hostility and a finely crafted barb that would not just sting and provoke anger, but do so insistently. Perhaps there’d even be a confusing spin—an insinuation only half-expressed to turn over in her mind again and again long after she wanted to stop thinking about it.

She couldn’t think of any such comment, so she forwent the bells and whistles and delivered her point undisguised. “I loathe you,” she informed him, packing as much buzzing animosity as she could into those three little words.

He didn’t smile at her—his expression was more thoughtful. “You don’t really, you know,” he finally answered her after a moment.

“I most certainly do!” Filia answered forcefully.

“No,” Xellos said, idly tapping his glass as Filia’s hot tea was placed in front of her. “You may hate me, but you don’t loathe me.”

Filia scowled. Xellos was just splitting hairs now—stupid purple hairs. “Those mean the same thing!”

Xellos tutted and waved his finger in her face. “Silly Filia,” he said, “don’t you know that there’s no such thing as a true synonym?”

Filia crossed her legs and took a too-hasty swig of her tea. She tried to pretend she hadn’t scalded herself as she demanded mockingly: “Fine, Professor Xellos, then what’s supposed to be the difference between hatred and loathing?”

“Well,” Xellos said thoughtfully, perhaps wishing he had a chalkboard on which to make his point, “they’re obviously rather similar concepts, as you’ve noted. Both are characterized by intense dislike.”

“And I do dislike you,” Filia cut in because she could, “intensely.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said, annoyed at the interruption. “The difference here is how that disapproval is manifest. Loathing is a sort of dry, cold attitude, whereas hatred is characterized by passionate dislike.”

“So…” Filia began, trying to get to the meat of his implication, “you’re saying I don’t loathe you because I dislike you passionately?”

“You’re passionate in general,” Xellos commented as though sharing a cherished observation, “but particularly toward me.”

Filia glared at him. She certainly didn’t like the sound of that. “In the most negative way possible,” she added as a qualifier.

“Of course, Filia,” Xellos said in his most obvious ‘I’m humoring you’ tone, “but that does point to the most important difference between loathing and hatred. Loathing is a repelling force while hatred is an attracting one. That’s the real tell that you don’t loathe me. You’re certainly not repulsed by me.”

Filia didn’t know where he got ‘certainly.’ Probably from the same place of ego-centric madness that convinced him pageboys and cheap staffs were at the height of fashion. “I am so repulsed by you,” she answered venomously, “because you’re repulsive!”

“No, you’re attracted to me,” Xellos corrected with a patient smile, “because I’m attractive.”

Filia nearly knocked over her tea when she collapsed face first onto the table in a fit of exasperated fury. The silverware rattled dangerously as she pounded her fist over and over into the tabletop. Ego-centric madness was right!

“What could possibly make you think something so ridiculous and obviously untrue?!” she demanded.

“It’s not the least bit ridiculous,” Xellos chided. He gave her a would-be sympathetic look. “You don’t need to feel ashamed of it. It’s perfectly understandable.”

She was getting a tension headache from gritting her teeth. She stood up in a huff and let out an exasperated groan. “I’m not ashamed of anything because that’s not true!” She put her hands on her hips and looked him squarely in the eye. “I don’t know where you get your illusions, but for your information I find every single, solitary, tiny aspect of you completely and utterly repulsive, you worthless pile of trash!”

Xellos responded to her tirade with an unaffected shrug. “If that’s true, then why are you here?” he asked.

Filia froze. “What?”

“If you’ll recall, I didn’t initiate this little conversation,” Xellos pointed out placidly. “If you really loathed me then you could’ve kept your sad perch on the edge of the fountain or left the area altogether. I’m entirely avoidable at the moment, so if I was truly so revolting to you then you could’ve easily opted out of dealing with me and feeling my presence. Instead, you couldn’t help but choose to join me—as near as possible. You are attracted to me.”

Filia opened her mouth to let out a disbelieving sound. A reply to such a feeble line of reasoning had to be easy enough to come up with, right? So… why couldn’t she manage one?

“I just wanted to be angry at you up close,” she responded in what she knew was a poor excuse.

Xellos smiled. “Up close is the point,” he answered.

“Well, I don’t need to be up close,” Filia snapped, snatching up her cup of tea. “You’re right about one thing—you are avoidable right now. So I’m just going to go off and finish my tea in better company: my own!”

“You do that, Filia,” he replied blithely.

She clomped over to a table on the patio that was as far away from him as it was possible to be without leaving the eating area entirely. She slammed down her cup of tea, much of which sloshed on the table as a result, swept her cloak out dramatically, and sat down.

Across the patio, Xellos muttered quietly to himself: “Five, four, three, two…”

Filia’s chair creaked as she got up and strode back over to him purposefully, her tea forgotten at the table. “Well, I don’t see what difference it makes if I’m here or there! I despise you as much up close as I do from a distance. So leaving you alone would just be letting you get away with everything!”

Xellos snickered unkindly and leaned back in his chair which provoked a new eruption of fury from Filia. “Stop laughing!” she commanded.

“Oh, it’s alright, Filia,” Xellos said, leaning forward once more and ceasing his laughter. “There’s no need to be so tense. After all, it’s not as though your feelings are unrequited.”

Filia took a startled step backwards. “What are you—”

“That’s right, Filia,” Xellos said, getting up and subjecting her to the full intensity of his stare. The reached out and clasped the still stunned dragon’s hands and held them in his. Then, in a voice overflowing with tender, heartfelt passion he confessed: “I hate you too.”

A shiver rattled around Filia’s spine for a few. She drew back and hugged her arms around her body, her stance and expression radiating deepest horror.

“Is there a problem?” Xellos asked with innocent interest.

“Of course there’s a problem!” Filia snapped, but her voice was rather panicky. “Your words are saying one thing but your tone is saying something entirely and terrifyingly different!”

“Oh?” Xellos pressed. “So… are you saying you don’t think that you and I were meant to hate each other—truly, madly, and deeply—for all eternity?”

Filia struggled for a moment, unsure how to respond to what was being said, or, more accurately, the way it was being said.

“…Or at least one night?” Xellos hinted.

Something flat-lined in Filia’s expression. The fists hanging from her side seemed to vibrate slightly. This wasn’t a volcanic eruption, but it would’ve been a good reason to start evacuating villages.

“Filia?” Xellos tried.

Filia drew in a breath as though preparing to go underwater for an unforeseeably long period of time. When she finished, she let out a ringing shout of: “GET AWAY FROM ME YOU DISGUSTING WEIRDO!” before running blindly off.

“Ah,” Xellos said at her retreating back, his tone somewhat deflated, “now you’re repulsed.”

Xellos watched her race off to the fountain she’d been camped out at before. She reached into the shallows and scooped out a handful of coins before flinging them back into the depths and adopting a prayerful gesture. Moves like that are generally frowned upon by whatever deities rule wishing fountains—but no doubt she felt her emergency wish justified the breach. He wondered if he should do something. He realized that he may have fumbled what had started out as promising by taking it too far.

He quickly decided not to worry about it. A little polarity shift wouldn’t change anything in the long run. He consoled himself that it was only temporary.

And sure enough, she was already turning around, pumping her arms furiously at her sides as she stamped back over to no doubt give him a piece of her mind.

She’d given him so many pieces of her mind that he was confident he’d have the whole thing before too long.

 

[AbsolXWolf]

Looks like I found a gold mine. Trust me, if I didn't have midterms these next two days, I would be eating these up and spitting out reviews for you. Ah, but I remember Slayers. Not very well, but I remember enough about the characters Filia and Xellos to know their personalities and the...er...way they treated each other. Expect to hear from me again when my school decides I've had enough torture.

 

[Skiyomi]

Where have you been all my life? I mean, thanks for reading I'm in about the same boat for writing--that's why there hasn't been a chapter update in a month. Once I get a breather from school there will be more.

Good luck with your midterms!

 

[AbsolXWolf]

Where have you been all my life?

I take it there aren’t many Slayers fans in a Pokémon community. By the way, how the heck do you do the cross out thing? I know how to do it in Word but it doesn’t carry over.

Yay! Two midterms down, two more to go. But the next one isn’t until Monday so I’m going to procrastinate—I mean, take a break hooray!
Uh…I hope you don’t mind extra long reviews. Because you write so well, I didn’t find much to criticize, so I ended up commenting my thoughts while reading. Er…but I might have gotten…carried away? Lol

He’d initially joined the clergy because he wanted a career in which he could avoid hard work and danger and stay indoors

Lamest excuse ever to join the clergy, Reverend Rinderpest. (Mmmm…alliteration) You could easily be an author: it’s a non-dangerous job, isn’t hard, and you can stay indoors. You get more excitement out of it too.

I’m scared of the dark and still sleep with a square of the blanket I had when I was a baby. I’m the last person that should be standing against the forces of darkness.

The irony here, dear Reverand, is that you joined the clergy because of its lack of danger/hard work.

Masis’s

When you have a name that ends in an “s”, you just put an apostrophe. So it would look like Masis'.

Of the two, the second tended to be difficult to permanently expel a spirit from, but the first tended to be the most dangerous for client and attending.

Might I direct your attention back to the original reason for joining the clergy yet again, dear Reverend? See, if you were an author you wouldn’t be having this problem, would you?

He’d tried to think of clowns with claws; he’d tried to think of gurgling masses of flesh and teeth; he’d tried to think tentacled monstrosities; and for some reason he’d tried to think of a little girl turning her head around three-hundred-and-sixty degrees.

My, these occurrences all seem oddly familiar. I wonder where I could possibly have seen these from.

Filia gave Verily the same look that his teacher’s had given him when he confused scripture enough to think that the wages of sin was, in fact, eternal life

But most people commit all sorts of sin just to reach eternal life, so in essence…

He looked hesitantly at the man on the chair watching him like a cat.

It’s a little hard to tell if the Reverend, being a skittish scaredy-cat, is the one watching Xellos or if Xellos is watching the Reverend like the sneaky little kitty he is. It’s probably the latter, only because when I think of cats I usually think of them popping out of nowhere just to annoy the heck out of you. Ha, I just got this image of Xellos as a cat.

Babbage

It’s like….cabbage…but with a “b”. Lol.

But what Filia really had objected to was after the tea had been drunk and Mrs. Babbage insisted on a tea leaf reading.

This sentence sounds a little weird to me. The “and” throws me off.

She’d also picked up another deck of tarot cards. That must make twenty by now.

She needs twenty decks of tarot cards? Does she want to simultaneously predict the future of a small army?

The girl couldn’t count.

It’s probably because I’m tired, but I don’t really understand what you mean by this. Hooray for lack of sleep!

But Filia didn’t seem to be occupying the same realm as her guest anymore. And it was at that point that Rosemarie Babbage saw Miss Filia scowl darkly at her cup; hurl it against the wall in a shower of porcelain; and scream to the universe, Mrs. Babbage, and destiny in general:

“The tea leaves are WRONG!”

Remember that time you and the party were assigned to couples through the drawing of gems, Filia? I think the universe kind of had it out for you. Sure, it had all been nothing but a hoax arrangement and sure the other two couples were paired up wrong but that’s beside the point.

Gourry following because he was epoxied to Lina at the hip

So that’s why their stomachs and appetites are so similar.

And then they’d picked up Sylphiel along the way just to make things more complicated.

Is she still infatuated with Gourry? I can’t remember whether or not she ever got over him.

But they were making the food thing work, mostly by cutting down to six courses per meal.

Would that be six courses between both Lina and Gourry or six courses each? Lol

It was called… ‘snapped corn’ or something.

Me: Lina, you do realize that’s for the feeding of farm animals, right?
Lina: Ba! Should I care?
Me: Ba, huh? Spoken like a true sheep
EDIT: So that's why she dressed up as a horse for that one episode where they went into the tower of dolls...

“Oh fine,” she said, slamming down the metal snack bowl on the floor with a giiiooong sound. “If you must know, it was Xellos.”

I remember that episode! Gourry was way too taken with that squid costume. And dare I say Amelia was the star of that episode? *gets run over for bad joke*

It worked too. Slimy prick.

Whose thoughts are these?

“A few years ago. Twice. On the cheek.”

When was the second time? I remember he kissed his finger and before pressing it to her lips in the episode he debuted on. Is that what you’re referring to? By the way, how many years after the end of the show does this fic take place?

“If you ask me, it sounds like you’re jealous.”

And for some reason I can hear Valgaav in the background singing:
Mommy is jelly!
She wants to be with Xelly!

“Filia, you’re really ruining the mood,” Xellos commented

Yes, Filia. You’re really ruining the mood. And to think I actually got up to go get some popcorn so that I could better enjoy this scene. Popcorn waster.

“I mean, I’ve done much worse things and you haven’t been as mad,” he pointed out.

“Name one!” Filia retorted.

Um…Filia? You don’t remember the time you overheard Xellos offering to kill Lina for Valgaav? Or does Lina no longer matter ‘cause she got a kiss and you didn’t?

He hesitated for a minute, brows furrowing ‘til they met in the middle, then brushed his lips almost gently against hers. She shivered visibly and… audibly. He seemed to take that as a cue to continue and… kissed her.

This is more like it. *munches on popcorn*

(such as Interrogation or Peer Pressure, the freezing of an unwary companion’s underwear, or raising the dead)

….Say what now?

She was afraid, and even angry that he would dare to step foot on the holy ground of temple.

I think you might be missing a “the” in between “of” and “temple”. Or should I mention this to the author of the book within your story? Lol

Filia took a deep breath, her face red and furious. She threw her head back angrily into the night and screamed: “XELLOS!!”

Oh so that’s what you do in your spare time, Xellos. Didn’t know you wrote saucy novels. By the way, Skiyomi. I LOVE THE SNIPPETS OF BOOK YOU PUT IN THERE. I only wish that I could read the whole “Forbidden Desires” novel; it has the potential for unlimited amusement.
On another note I must apologize to the Reverend Rinderpest. It seems that authoring books can be dangerous, especially if you end up angering a golden dragon. Looks like there’s only one path left to you, Reverend: marry rich.

Or, and Filia was much happier with this example, little boys! Yes! It was very much like that. Little boys often got the urge to pull of pigtails of little girls that they certainly didn’t like at all. And every knew there was nothing at all sexual about—

Try telling that to Sigmund Freud.

“You know,” he prompted. “Change my hair.”

Xellos with a mullet! Xellos with an afro! Xellos with a Mohawk! Xellos with a…ok I’ll stop.

And anyway, that’s not even his real form. His real form is as impersonal as things get. This is just… a costume he wears.

Wasn’t his real form something like a gust of wind or something? I can’t quite remember.

This was because he’d never learned one of the better, yet somehow less widely taught lessons from the Old Testament: Beware of women with scissors.

They have an Old Testament in the Slayers’ world?

Edie’s Garden

=Garden of Eden. I see what you did there.

She caught it, mostly on impulse and glared down at the red an
d noticeably shiny thing in her hand. It didn’t appear to have any worm holes in it. “I’m not going to eat it anyway,” she sniped. “It’s against the rules.”

Freaky spacing alert! Freaky spacing alert!

“I didn’t know dragons were so wasteful,” Xellos commented craftily.

THEY ARE. Filia almost made me waste a perfectly good bag of popcorn earlier today.

He reached out his hand toward her, leaning forward as she leaned slightly back. He rested a fingertip gently against her chin and dragged it slowly upwards to the corner of her mouth where the juice from the apple had dripped. He brought his hand back and thoughtfully licked the finger.

Did he do this while he still had his gloves on?

Xellos smirked. “I just thought you might have acquired a taste for forbidden fruit,” he said. He waved a finger at her. “I don’t think I was wrong.”

…Huh, I’m suddenly reminded of a movie title. Now what was it again? Oh yeah! “How to Train your Dragon.” But considering the earlier passage:

He smiled and moved closer to her as she gripped the apple like a chastity belt. His lips closed around hers almost lazily as his hand snaked around her and pressed steadily against her lower back. This was probably a good thing in retrospect or she would’ve fallen off the bench. Her head was already beginning to tilt to one side before she woke up enough to push him off of her.

And considering Filia’s short fuse, I think it should be a little more like “How to Tame your Dragon."
I WILL review the rest of them. It’s just that my ADHD only allows me to do stuff in chunks (plus I really should get started on my next midterm). And I’ve been suddenly stricken with a strange desire to watch Slayers again (I wonder why lol).

I think it’s only fair to tell you that these are wickedly good. I can’t seem stop reading. I literally have to tear my eyes away to type up more review (only to have my eyes demand more reading). By the end of today, I’m going to probably reach the end of the stories here even if I haven’t reviewed them yet.

Again, I’m sorry for the extra long review (um…please don’t be mad at me?). I actually ended up writing more pages in word on this review than I did a chapter of my current fanfiction project (though admittedly most of this review is filled with quotes).

Talk to you soon again!

 

[Skiyomi]

Don't be silly; I LOVE long reviews! Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and leave comments!

I take it there aren’t many Slayers fans in a Pokémon community. By the way, how the heck do you do the cross out thing? I know how to do it in Word but it doesn’t carry over.

I'm afraid there don't seem to be. *sigh*

Oh, strike-out is the same coding as italics or bold, it just uses an s instead of an i or a b.

When you have a name that ends in an “s”, you just put an apostrophe. So it would look like Masis'.

That's actually an issue with people on both sides who feel... well, very strongly about it (and they keep dragging poor Keats in as an example too!) I happen to be of the opinion that the extra s looks better and is clearer and since the issue is so divided, I choose to use my preferance.

She needs twenty decks of tarot cards? Does she want to simultaneously predict the future of a small army?

Actually, tarot card collecting is a thing.

It’s probably because I’m tired, but I don’t really understand what you mean by this. Hooray for lack of sleep!

A teenaged girl sleeping around in a world without or with limited contraceptives (it's hard to say in the Slayers world what they have because, for some reason I can't fathom, they've never mentioned any in the show. If they don't have magical methods then what they have is probably quite primitive/ineffective) would be wise to keep track of when she's ovulating and be able to count out when it would be safe to have sex. A girl who's bad at math however...

Is she still infatuated with Gourry? I can’t remember whether or not she ever got over him.

She was kinda blushy around him in Revolution... but I don't think she made any overt moves. If she's still hung up on him I think she's pretty much accepted that he's hung up on Lina.

Whose thoughts are these?

Lina's. I thought it was clear enough since it's right after she speaks, but maybe not.

When was the second time? I remember he kissed his finger and before pressing it to her lips in the episode he debuted on. Is that what you’re referring to? By the way, how many years after the end of the show does this fic take place?

Hmm? I'm pretty sure he kissed her on the cheek the first time around too--when he nabbed the Claire Bible manuscript and set the place on fire.

A few years. I'm not really too concerned about that.

And for some reason I can hear Valgaav in the background singing:
Mommy is jelly!
She wants to be with Xelly!

XD

Um…Filia? You don’t remember the time you overheard Xellos offering to kill Lina for Valgaav? Or does Lina no longer matter ‘cause she got a kiss and you didn’t?

Filia's... not completely rational at this point.

….Say what now?

Oh, you know, Ouiji boards, seances... harmless sleepover stuff!

I think you might be missing a “the” in between “of” and “temple”. Or should I mention this to the author of the book within your story? Lol

Ah, I should probably go around and fix some of these errors (I'm aware of a lot of them already) but if I fix them here I have to fix them everywhere else I've posted (which is especially annoying on fanfiction.net). Someday I'll do a massive overhaul of all my stuff.

Oh so that’s what you do in your spare time, Xellos. Didn’t know you wrote saucy novels. By the way, Skiyomi. I LOVE THE SNIPPETS OF BOOK YOU PUT IN THERE. I only wish that I could read the whole “Forbidden Desires” novel; it has the potential for unlimited amusement.
On another note I must apologize to the Reverend Rinderpest. It seems that authoring books can be dangerous, especially if you end up angering a golden dragon. Looks like there’s only one path left to you, Reverend: marry rich.

Someday I want to revisit Xellos as the secret trashy romance author... it just makes a weird amount of sense to me.

XD I probably couldn't write it. Those snippets were supposed to be fun for me because I could just let myself go and write something trashy, but it ended up being harder than I thought.

Xellos with a mullet! Xellos with an afro! Xellos with a Mohawk! Xellos with a…ok I’ll stop.

I vote for Xellos with a silly goatee and moustache.

Wasn’t his real form something like a gust of wind or something? I can’t quite remember.

It's a black cone.

They have an Old Testament in the Slayers’ world?

Fun part of not making the narrator an actual character from the show is making these kinds of references.

Did he do this while he still had his gloves on?

Why not? His clothes are part of his body.

Again, thanks so much for your wonderful comments! I really enjoyed reading them and it's nice to see another Slayers fan here :3

 

[AbsolXWolf]

That's actually an issue with people on both sides who feel... well, very strongly about it (and they keep dragging poor Keats in as an example too!) I happen to be of the opinion that the extra s looks better and is clearer and since the issue is so divided, I choose to use my preferance.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Sorry.

Actually, tarot card collecting is a thing.

I was just poking fun at Babbage's expense.

A teenaged girl sleeping around in a world without or with limited contraceptives (it's hard to say in the Slayers world what they have because, for some reason I can't fathom, they've never mentioned any in the show. If they don't have magical methods then what they have is probably quite primitive/ineffective) would be wise to keep track of when she's ovulating and be able to count out when it would be safe to have sex. A girl who's bad at math however...

Now I feel rather stupid that I didn't realize that before.

Lina's. I thought it was clear enough since it's right after she speaks, but maybe not.

It's a little fuzzy, mainly because before you only ever put Filia's thoughts in italics. But I realize now that you're writing in third person omniscient so it really isn't a big deal.

Hmm? I'm pretty sure he kissed her on the cheek the first time around too--when he nabbed the Claire Bible manuscript and set the place on fire.

To this day I am STILL looking for this in that episode.

Ah, I should probably go around and fix some of these errors (I'm aware of a lot of them already) but if I fix them here I have to fix them everywhere else I've posted (which is especially annoying on fanfiction.net). Someday I'll do a massive overhaul of all my stuff.

Understandable. I can't help but point them out...

Someday I want to revisit Xellos as the secret trashy romance author... it just makes a weird amount of sense to me.

You're not the only one who feels it makes sense.

XD I probably couldn't write it. Those snippets were supposed to be fun for me because I could just let myself go and write something trashy, but it ended up being harder than I thought.

To be candid, I find them a little fun to write.

I vote for Xellos with a silly goatee and moustache.

How is that so easy for me to imagine?

It's a black cone.

His form is one of the reasons he likes ice cream.

Fun part of not making the narrator an actual character from the show is making these kinds of references.

Ah! I guess I'm just so used to delving the narrator into the world when I write. Sorry.

BTW, What is a PM list and what is it used for?

“Oh please,” Filia said scornfully. “What would a monster know about interior decorating?”

Xellos raised an eyebrow and wondered what a dragon would know about it.

*AbsolXWolf snorts*

Xellos leaned forward. “Filia,” he said, “every time I come here the furniture is in a different configuration.”

Considering that he probably bothers her at least once a week…You have a lot of time on your hands, Filia.

“You clearly have way too much physical energy to expound,” he said. “You need a hobby.”

But she has a hobby: monster berating.

“How impressive,” Xellos commented in a tone that was snickering behind the bleachers. “What an interesting image that brings to mind,” he added thoughtfully. “You, drunk in a bar at midnight, swindling ham-fisted sailors out of their hard earned money.”

Is it wrong that I can imagine a drunk Filia at a bar arm wrestling and drinking her troubles off while every so often yelling about “That stupid monster”?

“There were ham-fisted sailors, though.”

What is a ham-fisted sailor anyways? All I can think about is a guy with big muscles and fat fingers.

“All-you-can-eat steaks from Tiberius’s T-bone House in the village square,” Filia said.

Tiberius: step-son of Octavian (the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar). Ever since I took a Roman Civ class, I can’t help but look at names like this.

Xellos looked around her openly to her gluteus maximus. “I imagine that was quite a lot,” he said.

LOL

“A game is always more fun with a wager,” Xellos said, looking into his tea as he swished it from side to side as if he wasn’t paying much mind to the conversation.

Reminds me of something that my classmates would say when I was younger: “A game is only fun until someone gets hurt. Then it’s hilarious.” Xellos would probably agree with this notion.

Xellos grinned. “Because if I didn’t show up, you’d have no healthy way to relieve all that frustration you’re so good at accumulating and eventually rearranging furniture wouldn’t be enough for you to deal with it so you’d snap and end up as a performer in some sort of underground mud wrestling competition.”

LOLSAYWUT?

She hesitated and then swallowed her pride and added her other hand. But even pushing with both hands she still couldn’t beat him.

I suppose he really is that physically strong, he just prefers to use words or magic.

She didn’t even notice as he leaned forward, tilted his head, and put his lips against hers.

:-D

“I…” she began, barely able to get the words out. “I win.”

Go Filia!

“She beat you,” Beastmaster Zelas summed up after her singular servant finished relating the unfortunate results of his arm-wrestling match with the ex-dragon priestess he insisted on spending so much time with.

I know he reports everything to Beastmaster, but it’s still funny reading about him reporting an arm-wrestling match. Don’t get me wrong, I find it extremely realistic that he would report even the slightest interaction between himself and Filia. It’s just that I find it amusing to witness it firsthand.

“That appears to be the case,” Xellos admitted in a tone with a chipper candy-coating and a nervous chocolate-center. “It seems I underestimated her focus.”

This sentence makes me hungry.

leaning over to take a sip from a martini glass containing a highly toxic, sweet blue liquid with a chemical make-up very similar to antifreeze.

Oh hey, I’m no longer hungry.

Zelas was not above letting her subordinate run into brick walls of his own making. At least when it was of no harm to her. She liked to think it taught valuable lessons.

She blew a smoke tesseract because smoke rings are for chumps. “Knock yourself out,” she said.

This is definitely how I’ve always imagined Zelas to be like. Great characterization!

Besides, it might be impossible; Xellos always seemed to know where he was.

You know, that’s quite possible. I never thought of it before now.

“I could,” Filia said through gritted teeth, starting to get really frustrated at this point. “But I! Don’t! Want to!”

The exclamation points don’t particularly look good to me. Um…it’s just my opinion (please don’t be mad!).

“So,” she heard him say, “when I was kissing you and you were nuzzling your face into my hand, did that mean you didn’t like it?”

That isn’t all that far from the truth, Xellos. She didn’t like it. She loved it. But don’t worry; people confuse the distinction all the time.

“Well, it was a pleasurable experience,” he said simply, causing something to go twang under Filia’s ribcage. “If I denied something so clearly true then that could only mean that I was hiding something important from myself,” he added in a holier-than-thou tone that was rather ironic on a demon.

Haha. At least someone in the relationship isn’t afraid of telling the truth occasionally.

“I don’t want you to kiss me!” she finally exploded out. “I don’t know how you can even say something so awful like it’s no big deal!”

Like I said before, at least Xellos isn’t afraid of telling the truth occasionally.

“And anyway,” she snapped, “why is it always on me? You just keep going on with your ‘Oh, Filia, you want this. It’s all you.’ when you’re the one that admitted to liking the kiss in the first place. Why don’t you just try honesty for once in your life, if only for the novelty of it, and say ‘Can I kiss you because I want to?’ It’s at least a less obnoxious strategy!”

Note to Filia: look at the above comments I made.

“I don’t even know why you’re bothering with this,” Filia said, mostly to herself. “I mean, it’s not like you felt the need to debate me about it last time. You just went ahead anyway and I was too shocked to…” She looked up into Xellos’s open eyes.

She might as well scream “Kiss me, dangit!”, because she all but gave him permission here.

“The,” she began – she couldn’t believe she was saying this, “the bedroom is upstairs.” Thank the gods she hadn’t moved the bed. Only because she couldn’t fit it out the door (which raised questions about how it got in there in the first place).

I hope you won’t hate me for being honest, but I would like a little more leading up to this comment. I know Filia doesn’t need too much persuasion to get it on with Xellos, but it still feels a little rushed.

Like she’d actually sacrifice a possible get-out-of-death-free card to satisfy her own obviously insane and morally reprehensible desires!

You only live once, Filia.

It wasn’t in a pretty container because it was only an inch thick layer of an alloy of orihalcon and magnetized iron that was keeping the radioactive sludge inside from eating through its container and dissolving through the world until it came out the other side.

This sentence sounds a little weird to me. If it were me, I would try to change it. (Please don't hate me)

“Really?” Xellos said. “Don’t you want him to live up to his potential?”

Sounds like someone is grooming someone for mischief making.

Perhaps he’s just in it for the mayhem, Filia thought sourly. Honestly, between the two of them she wasn’t sure which was more trouble.

I could be wrong, but I think you need a “who” instead of a “which”. Unless you're not referring to Val and Xellos.

“Of course,” Xellos said comfortingly. “I assured her that we’re just sleeping together.”

Filia’s mortification deepened. “You did what—”

Hey, he’s trying to prove to you that he can be honest.

Val’s face told a story, and it was an easy to read story with cardboard pages and big letters. Filia gave Xellos a fleeting look of amazement. Val’s first crush. And she hadn’t been the first one to notice it! Damn that observant bastard!

Wow. When I was 5 years old, crushes were the last thing on my mind. In fact, only one of my classmates was actually ever interested in crushing on someone. The rest of us were too busy making sandcastles.

Sure, it probably made some sense to Val. Xellos might have pretty purple hair, but he was still the male role model in Val’s life (unfortunately) so that probably made him the go-to person for advice on girls. But still! You do not ask a monster for dating advice! Someone ought to write that down…

You do not ask a monster for dating advice. There, I wrote it down lol. On a more serious note, I wouldn’t ask Xellos for dating advice. He has a tendency to attract the crazy girls. Like Filia. Joking, joking. *ducks as a mace comes flying my way*

“If you really want to impress her then do not be nice to her and definitely don’t compliment her,” Xellos said. Then he paused, gave the matter some thought, and added: “Unless you insult her before or after you compliment her. That actually works twice as well.”

Somehow, I don’t think too many girls would really be impressed by constant insults and bad behavior.

“Pull her hair,” Xellos suggested. “Make faces at her, chase her, call her names—”

That would definitely get him noticed, but do some girls really like that sort of attention? I get that it pretty much sums up the relationship between Xellos and Filia, but I don’t think it works on that young of a child. Plus, even Xellos is polite (or tries to be) to Filia sometimes.

“My advice won’t fail because it is excellent,” Xellos said assuredly. “Perhaps you should start picking up parenting tips from me, Filia,” he said, turning to her. “After all, I am the World’s Best Dad.”
Filia sucked in an exasperated breath. “Just because you buy a mug doesn’t make you—”

Do I detect Xellos admitting that Val is their love child?

“Well, she certainly doesn’t like him for this,” Filia said angrily. “Negative attention is not as good as positive attention, you know,” she reminded him.

As much as I like Xellos' personality, I prefer positive attention to negative when it comes to relationships. Of course, I would want them to be spiced with plenty of sarcasm, but that does not necessarily entail insults directed at each other. Am I just weird like that?

As usual, I found little wrong with your grammar and spelling. Your characterizations are perfect as always as well. So, like with last time, I took to making comments at the situations. Still trying to get caught up with my own work, and still trying to deal with an issue I’m having…

 

[Skiyomi]

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Sorry.

No prob, it's a pretty common thing. I just wanted you to know that I had a reasoning behind it.

Now I feel rather stupid that I didn't realize that before.

You weren't the only one who missed it--I'd gotten a couple of comments on other sites on that score.

To this day I am STILL looking for this in that episode.

I could dig it out because I have it on DVD, but I'm pretty sure he did kiss her on the cheek.

Understandable. I can't help but point them out...

XD And that's understandable too.

You're not the only one who feels it makes sense.

I'm glad!

How is that so easy for me to imagine?

XD He should totally try it.

His form is one of the reasons he likes ice cream.

...!! I never thought of that!

Ah! I guess I'm just so used to delving the narrator into the world when I write. Sorry.

BTW, What is a PM list and what is it used for?

I'm just the kinda writer that loves references, and this is often to my detriment, but it's often fun.

A PM list is a list of people a writer will contact whenever they update a fic.

Considering that he probably bothers her at least once a week…You have a lot of time on your hands, Filia.

And a looooot of energy to expend.

But she has a hobby: monster berating.

How appropriate since his is dragon berating!

Is it wrong that I can imagine a drunk Filia at a bar arm wrestling and drinking her troubles off while every so often yelling about “That stupid monster”?

XD It's not wrong, it's so right. I do intend to do one of these oneshots with a drunken Filia eventually (though she was drunk in one of my other fics The Oracle's Wish at one point already).

What is a ham-fisted sailor anyways? All I can think about is a guy with big muscles and fat fingers.

Yeah, basically just big hands.

Tiberius: step-son of Octavian (the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar). Ever since I took a Roman Civ class, I can’t help but look at names like this.

I think this one was coincidental, but I do like to use a lot of Roman/Greek names when it comes to dragons ever since I found out that 'Filia' means daughter in Latin.

Reminds me of something that my classmates would say when I was younger: “A game is only fun until someone gets hurt. Then it’s hilarious.” Xellos would probably agree with this notion.

I'm sure he would!

LOLSAYWUT?

Xellos has a dirty mind

I suppose he really is that physically strong, he just prefers to use words or magic.

Could be that he feeds magic into his physical strength too.

Go Filia!

It's nice to see Filia win one of these every so often!

This is definitely how I’ve always imagined Zelas to be like. Great characterization!

Thanks! I think this was the first time I wrote Zelas into a story and I was really worried about how it would come across. I've written her in a few times since and it's gotten easier.

The exclamation points don’t particularly look good to me. Um…it’s just my opinion (please don’t be mad!).

Dooon't worry! I've never been mad at you. Even if I disagree I'm really happy to hear your input and your comments, so if I disagree, don't think I'm mad--I'm just giving you my rationale for why I did what I did and why I don't want to change it.

In this case, I really wanted to communicate the choppiness of what she's saying--shouting every word individually. The exclamation marks really communicate the cadence of how the sentence is being verbally delivered in a way I'm not sure I could accomplish without them.

Note to Filia: look at the above comments I made.

Oh, he tells the truth most of the time, but that's not the same thing as being honest

She might as well scream “Kiss me, dangit!”, because she all but gave him permission here.

XD And she only realized that when it was too late.

I hope you won’t hate me for being honest, but I would like a little more leading up to this comment. I know Filia doesn’t need too much persuasion to get it on with Xellos, but it still feels a little rushed.

I think it works in the context of a oneshot, but I could see your thinking that. The problem here is that these oneshots, while dipping into Filia's perspective, are more from Xellos's perspective and interests, so there's not a lot of internal monologue saying 'should I' or 'shouldn't I' like I've had in some other fics in these kinds of situations.

Still not hating

This sentence sounds a little weird to me. If it were me, I would try to change it. (Please don't hate me)

What about it sounds weird? Again, I don't take offense, I'm just not sure what you mean.

Sounds like someone is grooming someone for mischief making.

And no surprise there!

I could be wrong, but I think you need a “who” instead of a “which”. Unless you're not referring to Val and Xellos.

I do believe you're right. *hangs head* Another error that will probably go unfixed for quite some time.

Wow. When I was 5 years old, crushes were the last thing on my mind. In fact, only one of my classmates was actually ever interested in crushing on someone. The rest of us were too busy making sandcastles.

In the grand scheme of things, sandcastles are probably more fun than love.

You do not ask a monster for dating advice. There, I wrote it down lol. On a more serious note, I wouldn’t ask Xellos for dating advice. He has a tendency to attract the crazy girls. Like Filia. Joking, joking. *ducks as a mace comes flying my way*

And Martina XD Apparently (crazy) chicks dig Xellos.

That would definitely get him noticed, but do some girls really like that sort of attention? I get that it pretty much sums up the relationship between Xellos and Filia, but I don’t think it works on that young of a child. Plus, even Xellos is polite (or tries to be) to Filia sometimes.

I think I put some sort of disclaimer on one of my versions of this that Xellos's tactics may have mixed results on girls over five who aren't Filia

It's not exactly the finest approach, but it is the one favored by confused five-year-old boys (and, of course, Xellos).

Do I detect Xellos admitting that Val is their love child?

Or thinking of himself as Val's step-dad. Either could work.

As much as I like Xellos' personality, I prefer positive attention to negative when it comes to relationships. Of course, I would want them to be spiced with plenty of sarcasm, but that does not necessarily entail insults directed at each other. Am I just weird like that?

As usual, I found little wrong with your grammar and spelling. Your characterizations are perfect as always as well. So, like with last time, I took to making comments at the situations. Still trying to get caught up with my own work, and still trying to deal with an issue I’m having…

Considering he's a monster, it's no wonder he loves the negative attention.

Thanks so very much for all your comments! And good luck IRL--I'm sorry things aren't going well

 

[Skiyomi]

Here's theme #38

Herbal Remedy. PG.

Filia had to admit, Xellos wasn’t the worst person in the world to go grocery shopping with. Oh, he certainly wasn’t as attentive a helper as Jillas or as willing to carry bags as Gravos, but at least he didn’t double the grocery bill, which was more than she could say for Val and his growing-boy appetite. So with Jillas minding the store and Gravos taking Val to clarinet lessons, she could at least say it wasn’t ungodly awful to have Xellos accompany her.

…Although not out loud.

“Try not to drop anything this time,” she told him testily as they navigated through the crowded aisles of the outdoor market. “I’m sick of hearing ‘Clean up in aisle 5!’ everywhere we go.”

“Accidents happen, Filia,” he informed her sagely, readjusting his grip on the paper bag he’d deigned to carry.

“Accidents happen suspiciously often around you!” she snapped back before turning to look at her shopping list. “Let’s see… I think that’s all we need for food, but…” She looked around. “Oh!”

She glided over to a table with shelves behind it in the far corner of the bazaar. Several glass containers filled with seeds and dried leaves and stalks lined it, each with a tiny handwritten label. An elderly woman behind the counter nodded to Filia before turning back to her wares.

“My stock is pretty much gone and with cold and flu season just around the corner,” Filia explained, picking up a plastic bag and looking around at the selection, “well, you just can’t be too careful.”

Xellos put down the bag he was carrying and gingerly observed the description on one of the herbs. “Truly,” he said, “sage is the miracle drug of our generation.”

“Don’t make fun,” Filia chided. “It’s amazing what you can do with herbs. Caraway seeds, for example,” she said, taking a scoop and ladling some of the seeds into the plastic bag, “can cure snake bites, bring down fevers, and ease sensitive stomachs.”

“And they’re delicious on rye bread,” Xellos finished.

Filia closed the bag of caraway seeds, annoyed, but not about to deny a basic fact. “That too,” she said, picking up a prepackaged bag of reddish leaves and glancing at the label. “You have to know what you’re doing with herbs,” she commented, almost to herself. “It takes understanding and finesse; otherwise the cure can be worse than the disease.”

“Then I await the inevitable trip to the local clinic to get your stomach pumped,” Xellos commented.

Before Filia could respond harshly, Xellos pointed to something on one of the shelves that had caught his eye. “Do you need one of those?”

“One of what?” Filia asked, teeth gnashed together as she looked to see what he was pointing at.

“You know,” Xellos said, “that mushroom that looks strangely like a—”

She slapped his hand away and let out a shriek before he could finish his sentence. “I don’t need an aphrodisiac!” she whisper-screeched at him, scandalized.

“Ah, so you have the opposite problem, then?” Xellos concluded knowingly. “Then perhaps you should try this?” he asked, pointing to a thin green stalk with tiny white blossoms growing in bunches at the top. “The sign says it’s good for repressing sexual desire.”

“Would you please keep your voice down?” Filia demanded, as the old woman working behind the table gave the two of them an odd look. Filia smoothed back her frizzing-from-frustration hair, and nodded to the plant Xellos had indicated. “That’s cowbane,” she said haughtily. “They used to grow it around the temple.”

“That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Xellos commented. “Does it work?”

Filia opened her mouth to respond, but hesitated. Finally she said, “Technically, yes. It’s a very dangerous poison.”

“Oh, I see. So it solves the problem permanently,” he said with a smile.

He walked along the edge of the table, looking at the assortment of plants. “Come to think of it,” he said, “a lot of these are poisons. Oh, several are harmless, but a large portion are downright lethal.”

He stopped at one particular plant—a leafy one with ominous black berries. “Belladonna,” he read.

Filia looked uneasily over his shoulder at the plant. “I know some people use it for a pain killer, but it’s so temperamental that it’s just never seemed safe to me.”

“Isn’t this the same plant that makes witches fly?” Xellos asked off-handedly, not taking his eyes off the glass display where the plant sat.

Filia gave him a curious look. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Levitation makes witches fly.”

Xellos gave a slight sigh. “That’s not really what I meant.”

“Well then you should say what you mean,” Filia retorted grouchily.

“Deadly Nightshade, the devil’s herb… Belladonna,” Xellos read again. “Why does it not surprise me that a fatally poisonous herb has a name meaning ‘beautiful woman?’”

Filia twitched. After being around Xellos this long she was developing an instinct for when he was insulting her. He liked to do so in clever ways with sly implications that he thought she wouldn’t pick up on, but she was wise to him. Of course, this one put her in a bind. She couldn’t respond to him calling her poisonous without acknowledging that he’d called her beautiful.

In the end, she bit her lip and ignored the barb. “Devil’s herb,” she said, “that reminds me—I’ve got to pick up some devil’s hairpins.” She reached out to scoop a few blackened looking slender leaves into another baggy.

Xellos gave her a long look. “Filia,” he said, “of all people, I shouldn’t be the one to have to tell you this, but plants with ‘devil’ in their name are usually poisonous. It’s one of those handy tip-offs like ‘bane’ and ‘deadly.”

“I know that,” Filia snapped. “For your information everything is poisonous at a certain dose. But with the right know-how, plants that can kill in large doses can save lives in small doses. And the right dose is different for different people. Not everything with ‘devil’ in its name is as toxic as you,” she added, because she needed some kind of revenge for the Belladonna comment—the insulting part as well as the purposefully confusing compliment part.

“I see,” Xellos pondered. “So what’s the ideal dose of me?”

Filia made a face. “Even small doses of you make me nauseous.”

Xellos held onto his smile, but it had gone all crinkly and annoyed. “Oh?”

“And,” Filia went on, a wicked thought striking her, “you remember what cowbane is supposed to do?”

The thin smile turned into a very definite frown. “That’s uncalled for.”

“The truth hurts,” Filia jabbed back.

Xellos thought the lady doth protest too much. “Are you sure you haven’t gotten that backwards? Like you’d need the cowbane after taking a dose of me? That seems much more likely to me.”

Filia scowled. All the ways she could think of to take a dose of Xellos were… no. “You are not an aphrodisiac.”

“Then what am I?” Xellos pressed on. “What’s my medical benefit?”

“You don’t have one,” Filia informed him. “You’re noxious through and through.”

“Oh, but I must have some kind of benefit—in the right quantity and to the right person. I think someone told me that even deadly poisons do. …What do I cure?”

Filia was flabbergasted, not just because she didn’t want to be forced into an answer but because he… because he always… “Why do you always want to do this?” she demanded.

“Do what?” Xellos asked. “Talk about herbs? I think this is the first real conversation we’ve had about them.”

“Not that,” she said dismissively. “It’s like you always want us too…” she trailed off, trying to think of how to describe it, “similize each other or something!”

“Similize?” Xellos repeated as though he’d just picked up something disgusting like a used tissue or a made up word.

“Yes, similize!” Filia snapped, triumphant. “As in make a simile.”

“Simile is a word,” Xellos answered, “but I very much doubt that ‘similize’ is.”

“I verbified it,” Filia retorted. “It is what you do anyway.”

“What makes you think I want to be… ‘similized?’” Xellos asked, a little derisively.

“You want me to compare you to an herb—that sounds pretty… similizey…ish,” Filia finished lamely. “And this isn’t even the first time,” she pointed out, voice rising in strength once more. “We go to the zoo, you compare me to an iguana; I try to pick out what tea to have and somehow you turn the conversation into one entirely about you; we can’t even look at a spiderweb without talking about what bug each of us would be!”

“The first one was more of a garden variety taunt than a simile,” Xellos pointed out, but without gaining much traction.

Filia ignored him. “It’s like… every conversation we have somehow gets overlaid with a discussion about… about… it’s all just you and me! And I suppose it’s sort of a nice poetic convention,” she admitted, “but if we’re going for poetry then isn’t the subject usually… flowers, or moonlight, or summer days? Something more romantic like that?”

Filia nearly slapped her hand over her mouth. She should not have said the R-word. It didn’t matter that she’d… well, that she’d noticed. She did not want to be the one to mention it first.

And ooooh he’d make her suffer for it. She could practically see his faux-innocent expression already, coupled with, ‘Romantic? Are we supposed to have romantic conversations now, Filia? Do you imagine me writing a sonnet comparing you to the rebirth of spring? Do tell, Filia, do tell. I’ve always wondered what you write in your diary at night and I must say this has been very eye-opening. Are you quite sure you don’t want that cowbane? Hmm?’

“Herbs aren’t unromantic,” he pointed out, completely failing to take the bastard-route. “Many of them are flowers, after all, and quite beautiful. The right herb can cleanse and heal, while the wrong one can bring swift death. As far as romantic subjects go, they seem ripe for comparison.”

Filia stared for a minute, stunned not only at her escape but at the fact that he was taking this conversation seriously. “I… I suppose,” she finally said. “But that still doesn’t change the simile thing!” she said, regaining her footing and pointing an accusatory finger at him. “Why do you always insist on making me compare you to things?”

Xellos shrugged. “Why do you think?”

“Because…” she began, thinking carefully, “…because you like to be objectified?”

Xellos frowned. “Try again.”

“Because…” she trailed off. It was like… maybe they could say these things without the trappings of figurative language, but it would be… dangerous. It was a way of figuring each other out without the risk of plainly asking. It was their process, together, of finding out what they were to one another.

“I think I know,” she said quietly.

He gave her a searching look but did not press her for an answer. “Good,” he said. “So then can you tell me… what do I… no, what do we cure each other of?”

Filia thought. It felt like there was so much to say, but so little that she could actually communicate. She took a deep breath and tried: “…Patience.”

Xellos turned this over in his mind and then nodded slowly. “I agree,” he said. “Usually patience is something I value, but… there are times when it can be an impediment to what really matters.”

There was a long silence. Filia stared at the floor. Finally Xellos picked up the bags of groceries and herbs that they’d set down. “Let’s go home, Filia,” he said.

“…Right,” Filia said. It was all so hard to pin-point things in conversations with Xellos. There was where she knew they were and where they pretended they were. There was such a big difference between the two that there was always the danger of a slip-up.

Xellos nodded to one of the items on the shelf. “Are you sure you don’t want to get that mushroom shaped like a—”

“No!” Filia exploded. “Stop asking!”

“Of course,” Xellos said meaningfully. “Why would you need that when you have me?”

Filia grit her teeth. “We decided that you cure patience, remember?”

“Exactly,” Xellos said, drawing up next to her and putting the hand that wasn’t holding grocery bags against the small of her back. “So let’s go home and really lose our patience with each other.”

Filia let out an appalled sort of sound, but didn’t move away from him. “You can’t pull those kinds of comments on me and expect them to go over my head anymore,” she informed him sourly. “I know what you’re implying.”

“Perfect,” Xellos said, “that’s even better.”

Filia grumbled slightly to herself as they strolled toward the exit of the bazaar so that they could pay for their groceries, take them home, put them away and then… alright, maybe they’d be a little… impatient. Anyway, patience is all well and good, but at some point, she realized, it had just become the thing holding them back.

And maybe… maybe he wouldn’t make such a terrible remedy after all.

Filia couldn’t suppress a smile. “I’m kind of disappointed in you, you know,” she said.

He turned to her with a puzzled look. “Why?”

She jabbed at his shoulder with her finger. “Because you didn’t make a ‘take one and call me in the morning’ joke.”

 

[AbsolXWolf]

Wolves and Their Prey. Rated PG.

:-D :-D :-D I LOVE WOLVES! YOU MADE WOLF REFERENCES! I LOVE YOU! *GLOMPS*
Whoot. Ok. Sorry for being creepy there. This has got to be my favorite drabble of yours so far, and not just because it references my favorite animal. I like it because Xellos analyzes the relationship he has with Filia and, at the end, the paralleling story of the wolf and the lamb hints at him going against his own kind to save her in the future. If this isn’t perfection, I don’t know what is.

Really, there is no such sustainable unit as a lone wolf. Oh, lone wolves exist; pushed out by the higher ups in their packs for various crimes against the pack. But a lone wolf is only one step away from death. A wolf by itself will not howl to the lonely moon unless it wants to risk being torn to pieces by either its old pack or a neighboring pack. Wolves have a complicated hierarchy that extends far beyond the alpha pair. Wolves hunt in groups. A wolf by itself cannot scrape by for long in this cold, cruel world. A lone wolf is not romantic.

True, true, and true. You appear to like wolves as much as I do. I can’t tell you how frustrated I become when people merely slap a label on wolves in a story without fully looking up facts about them.

Indeed they do have a complicated hierarchy. There is a slight democracy observed among wolves according to Mech’s 1970 book: The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species. While it’s true that the alpha pair more or less drives the pack’s behavior, if enough subservient wolves vote on something they can get the entire pack to go along with it.

Er….sorry. Wolf ecstasy makes me spout information. I’ll be good now, I promise.

He knew, though, that even if he came across a meal his hunger would not be assuaged for long. The Alpha pair had bred, and a litter had been born. It was the responsibility of the entire pack to feed them, not just their parents’. Yes, it was the place of the hunters to give up even food that was already in their stomachs for the soft-toothed pups.

Leftovers anyone? I’m glad you mentioned this aspect, because most people I know think that only birds feed through vomiting.

Three hundred miles away, in the kitchen of Miss Filia Ul Copt – dragon, single-mother, and successful small business owner – Xellos ruminated. Filia shoved a cup of tea in front of him bad-naturedly and wished he’d go ruminate somewhere else.

Ruminating about tea, the universe, the existence of monsters, and how good Filia’s rear end would look if a gust of air were to “accidentally” come breezing her way?
He’d often thought back on how it all started, because it had been a moment full of… strangeness. It certainly didn’t go the way it should’ve gone at all.

But Filia certainly hadn’t been at all respectful when they first met. In fact, he distinctly remembered her calling him a creep and building a barbed wire fence around him in a matter of minutes. This had never happened to him before in all his dealings with dragons; even the ones that had been very efficient fence-builders.

I guess he’s not thinking about Filia’s rear end, but her rearing. And I remember that part in the Anime!

But Filia didn’t seem to consider that, or if she did she decided to ignore it. Maybe she was too prideful to consider her own mortality. Maybe she’d been so sheltered from living in the temple her whole life that she’d never had to be careful. Maybe, and Xellos tended to think this toward the end of a long day, she’s just naturally obnoxious.

Is it quite possible, Xellos, that you just make her too angry to care about something as ridiculously trite as, oh I don’t know…life? You distract her from life, Xellos. You’re converting her over to your side by distracting her from life, the element opposite of the monster race.

She hadn’t acted the way she should. And it had been… perplexing. Xellos wasn’t often perplexed. His mind was sharp, his knowledge was broad, and his intuition was keen. It wasn’t something he had to deal with on a frequent basis.

And, as is so often the case with confusion, it had made him very irritated.

How to confuse a monster step one: act the complete opposite of what’s expected

It had somehow gotten beyond its pen and was nonchalantly drinking from a puddle in the low grass as though it wasn’t made of protein.

I love this sentence.

As the wolf looked closer he realized that this wasn’t an ordinary lamb. It wasn’t a standard animal for sheering. It was well fed, its coat had been cleaned recently, and it had a shiny bow tied around its neck. Somebody loved this lamb.

Allow me to pause a moment and bask in the wonderful hilarity that comes from representing a beam inducing, golden dragon as a pet lamb.

The lamb watched as the wolf tried to shift his sharp predator mind back into gear in this unprecedented situation. Then it appeared to make up its mind. It lowered its head.

And rammed it straight into the wolf’s nose.

All I can imagine in my head is a Filia-esque lamb breathing out beam attacks, screaming at the wolf to “stop dodging” while the farmer is off to the side with a dumbstruck look on his face. Oh, and the wolf has a “stupid” bowler cut hairdo of course.

He got up and tried to suppress a whine as his tender nose sniffed the air. He watched as the lamb walked off into the forest with her head held high and entirely too much flounce for an ungulate.

This is so Filia. Considering her name, I half expected you to use a filly instead of a lamb, but I think I like the use of a lamb better now.

Xellos had to admit that he’d been a bit impressed by Filia’s gall. That is… it had left an impression on him at least.

How to confuse a monster step two: get some gall.

Pushing buttons to see when someone would snap was a… hobby, you could say. Filia was clearly all buttons and snapped on such a regular basis that to still be together she must have possessed some truly elastic qualities.

Xellos, I think you meant to say “Pushing buttons because I love screwing with people was a… hobby” right there.

He started to wonder about her. Clearly this wasn’t an ordinary lamb if she would go so far as to attack a wolf. Hadn’t she ever seen a wolf before? Hadn’t she heard the barking in the night and come out to the pens only to find one of her siblings missing? Could she at least sense, somewhere deep in her ancestral memory, that things with claws and sharp teeth should be feared?

*AbsolXWolf is waiting for the wolf to start hitting on the lamb. Any moment now…*

Girls tended to tie bows around things for some reasons.

I always thought it was to make things look better. Or something.

Just you wait. He crept through the underbrush after her. You’ll learn your folly…

…but later.

…but never. Am I right?

Xellos had long ago decided that it would be worthwhile to keep an eye on Filia.

Or at least an eye on Filia’s rear. (sorry, I’m super hyper and random today)

Filia had a battering-ram of an intellect.

Funny how you mention a male-sheep there.

But suddenly, as he looked at her, it seemed to change before his eyes. The rocks went up high, and the water flowed out from between them in glassy sheets. It was an icy taste from where the forest turned into highlands, and the highlands turned into mountains. The circle of trees around it let the sun in, and cast multicolored refractions in the misty air.

Awww. The wolf looking through the eyes of a sheep.

She stepped on his tail along the way.

Oooh that was a good one, Filia lamb. I think Xellos has said on a number of occasions that Filia has a tendency to ruin the moment sometimes.

“If you’re going to loiter here all the time than you could at least do something useful,” she said sharply as he took the duster in a numb sort of way. “I’m going to clean in the storeroom and you might try to help!” She stormed off down the hall.

Xellos. Doing something useful that doesn’t require someone getting screwed in the process. Why do I have a hard time imagining this? XD

Xellos followed her. The thing about Filia was that she was different. He was sure that the dragon elders at the temple had tried to stifle the audacity out of her.

I did wonder about this. I mean, Filia is good, no doubt about it, but I can’t say for certain that she’s a shining example of how dragon priestesses act. Not that I really care about how a true priestess should act; I prefer Filia’s straightforward and bold personality to any priestess character I can think of.

“And don’t you dare break anything!” she warned,

Xellos? Breaking something? Never.

It would all be fine. He could keep this; whatever it was that this was. He was minding all the spinning plates that could lead to catastrophe. He had everything completely under his control. And if it all must end someday, he could deal with that too. After all, he was a monster.

Ah Xellos and his falsified belief that everything is “under control”. Dare I say he’s much too arrogant to see that everything might NOT be as “controlled” as he might think?

There was a horrible shatter of pottery as one tall vase that Xellos had been cleaning fell into the one next to it, causing a domino effect across the entire shelf.

I SO SAW THIS COMING!! XD it was practically destined to happen the moment Filia told him NOT to break anything. Murphy's Law happens in full effect when there's a monster involved. Most of the time because the monster in question carries out Murphy's Law himself.

He smiled to himself. It was alright. This was alright. It wasn’t as though he’d ever have to pay a price for it or anything.

Love the double meaning here: he could either be thinking of the pottery he just broke or the fact that he might be ordered to kill her one day.

The wolf tracked the lamb on the path back to the farm. He’d tried walking beside her for part of the time, but she had a mean kick. Best to watch her from the sidelines.

It’s rather ironic that Xellos mentioned watching from up close whereas the wolf here mentions watching from the sidelines.

And anyway, it was hard to think of her like the other sheep who did nothing but chew grass all day with constipated expressions

They do have constipated expressions! D-:

After all, he’d experienced so many things that day that evolution had denied him the luxury of: curiosity, empathy, wonder, confusion, and…

Xellos and empathy. Hmmmm…

The wolf’s hair stood on end as his shoulder-blades rose together in barely suppressed rage. For another wolf to take the prey he’d been stalking all day was intolerable. It was not for the other wolf to decide what happened to her!

Is this foreshadowing of something that may happen later in a book of yours? *hopeful*

When wolves kill it can take hours; blood-soaked hours as the hapless animal is battered back and forth in the grip of the wolf’s teeth. It’s not a pleasant way to die: waiting for your neck to be broken.

It’s more like waiting for them to find your carotid artery. Wolves typically bite the carotid artery in the throat when it comes to sheep according to Erik Zimen’s 1981 book: The Wolf: His Place in the Natural World. Arguably, it isn’t much better, because it takes a least 30 seconds or so for the sheep to die after this particular artery has been severed. I do think the way you described the snapped neck sounds more eloquent.

There will be a price to pay for this, no matter what happens.

Perfect ending sentence. LOVE IT.

Oh yeah. I forgot to respond to your last response. Sorry!

I could dig it out because I have it on DVD, but I'm pretty sure he did kiss her on the cheek.

Yes please! I still can’t find the part and it’s driving me a little cuckoo.

XD It's not wrong, it's so right. I do intend to do one of these oneshots with a drunken Filia eventually (though she was drunk in one of my other fics The Oracle's Wish at one point already).

*Goes looking for The Oracle’s Wish*

Xellos has a dirty mind

I’m sure he’d insist that it’s nothing more than “inspiration” for his trashy novels.

It's nice to see Filia win one of these every so often!

Yes please let Filia win a few things when it comes to Xellos. Goodness knows she deserves a victory every now and then.

In the grand scheme of things, sandcastles are probably more fun than love

Oh I know what you mean. At least with sandcastles you don’t feel any pain when it decides to disappear.

I think I put some sort of disclaimer on one of my versions of this that Xellos's tactics may have mixed results on girls over five who aren't Filia

It's not exactly the finest approach, but it is the one favored by confused five-year-old boys (and, of course, Xellos).

LOL at the disclaimer.
I suppose I could see a few five-year-olds who have NO idea what they’re doing think that violence is somehow the key to getting favorable attention.

But what’s disheartening is watching a few of my colleagues getting into relationships with men who have seemingly yet to grow out of that violent phase. And all the while these females associates of mine insist that “they’ll work things out”. It...hurts to watch them basically torture themselves just to stay in such a relationship.

 

[Skiyomi]

:-D :-D :-D I LOVE WOLVES! YOU MADE WOLF REFERENCES! I LOVE YOU! *GLOMPS*
Whoot. Ok. Sorry for being creepy there. This has got to be my favorite drabble of yours so far, and not just because it references my favorite animal. I like it because Xellos analyzes the relationship he has with Filia and, at the end, the paralleling story of the wolf and the lamb hints at him going against his own kind to save her in the future. If this isn’t perfection, I don’t know what is.

XD Thanks! Wolves are pretty awesome!

True, true, and true. You appear to like wolves as much as I do. I can’t tell you how frustrated I become when people merely slap a label on wolves in a story without fully looking up facts about them.

Indeed they do have a complicated hierarchy. There is a slight democracy observed among wolves according to Mech’s 1970 book: The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species. While it’s true that the alpha pair more or less drives the pack’s behavior, if enough subservient wolves vote on something they can get the entire pack to go along with it.

Er….sorry. Wolf ecstasy makes me spout information. I’ll be good now, I promise.

I did a bit of reading up on Wolves before I launched into this oneshot--it seemed necessary if I wanted to stay accurate. I think the book I read was called "Spirit of the Wild Dog" and it taught me a lot.

Leftovers anyone? I’m glad you mentioned this aspect, because most people I know think that only birds feed through vomiting.

It's pretty neat--especially since wolves do this for pups that aren't even their own.

Ruminating about tea, the universe, the existence of monsters, and how good Filia’s rear end would look if a gust of air were to “accidentally” come breezing her way?

Well, that's the usual state of affairs in Xellos's brain

All I can imagine in my head is a Filia-esque lamb breathing out beam attacks, screaming at the wolf to “stop dodging” while the farmer is off to the side with a dumbstruck look on his face. Oh, and the wolf has a “stupid” bowler cut hairdo of course.

!! That would've been awesome! It would've been a super lamb! XP

I always thought it was to make things look better. Or something.

Yup. Sometimes the answers are simple.

Funny how you mention a male-sheep there.

XD I didn't even mean to do that.

I did wonder about this. I mean, Filia is good, no doubt about it, but I can’t say for certain that she’s a shining example of how dragon priestesses act. Not that I really care about how a true priestess should act; I prefer Filia’s straightforward and bold personality to any priestess character I can think of.

It's hard to say because we see so little of dragon society, but I always think of it being rather patriarchical because of Filia's attitudes and because of the fact that I have never seen another female dragon--not on the council of elders, not anywhere. If that's the case, then Filia's bold attitude is even more surprising.

I SO SAW THIS COMING!! XD it was practically destined to happen the moment Filia told him NOT to break anything. Murphy's Law happens in full effect when there's a monster involved. Most of the time because the monster in question carries out Murphy's Law himself.

You'd think Filia would know better than to bait him

It’s more like waiting for them to find your carotid artery. Wolves typically bite the carotid artery in the throat when it comes to sheep according to Erik Zimen’s 1981 book: The Wolf: His Place in the Natural World. Arguably, it isn’t much better, because it takes a least 30 seconds or so for the sheep to die after this particular artery has been severed. I do think the way you described the snapped neck sounds more eloquent.

"Spirit of the Wild Dog" made it sound more like they throttled things to death by eventually breaking their neck. It was talking about that as being a big different between canines and felines (which have a good dental arcade for cutting vital arteries). Then again, you've obviously read more wolf books than I have.

Yes please! I still can’t find the part and it’s driving me a little cuckoo.

I'll go do that and see what I can find... should be episode two...

LOL at the disclaimer.
I suppose I could see a few five-year-olds who have NO idea what they’re doing think that violence is somehow the key to getting favorable attention.

But what’s disheartening is watching a few of my colleagues getting into relationships with men who have seemingly yet to grow out of that violent phase. And all the while these females associates of mine insist that “they’ll work things out”. It...hurts to watch them basically torture themselves just to stay in such a relationship.

Oh, they're not after positive attention. They're after ANY attention.

Childish pulling pig-tails =/= adult abuse. That's a whoooole different matter entirely.

I'll go dig up that DVD, though--I was thinking of taking screenshots today anyway. I'll edit in what I find. (EDIT: You are right--he did just kiss his finger and press it to her lips. ...Which is going to drive me nuts because I swear I remember two specific instances of cheek kissing. Did this happen in another episode that I mixed up with this one... or did my fevered brain cook this up? Have I been watching Try too much to the detriment of my Next memory?

*madness sets in*)

Thanks so much for your comments! I love reading them!