Ilari started to trill victoriously, but cancled it and bit his lip to quiet himself before he woke Kiah up. He was starting to think that something had been bothering her more and more for the last couple of days and waking her up at the crack of dawn was no way to help her recover from whatever it was. He looked back to his little armies and shushed them, too, since it was technically supposed to be a victory trill from them.
Ilari looked the arrangement over with a critical eye. The Twig Army- that's Them- was set up in just the right formation that he remembered from the White River Battle in storytime the night before. The river was shaped just right too, made of ash from last night's fire. The Pebble Army, though- that's Us- was arranged a little differently. Kiah's answers to Ilari's infinate "what if they did it this way?"s hadn't been through enough to satisfy his curiosity, since she'd been so busy appreciating what they had done that she didn't give picking it apart much attention. But that was okay. He could just try to figure it out himself.
Although sometimes... sometimes it was more fun just to wing it and make up his own battles. But that was okay. Kiah said that was good for his 'creative thinking'. One of the Pebble Army soldiers suddenly disregarded history entirely to become Kiah on a silver warhorse in plate armor and charged forward to start kicking butt. The Twig Army fled, leaving the Kiah Pebble to stand proudly and watch the cowards flee. Ilari didn't understand when the generals kept after the people running away. You already won, so why do that? He didn't understand, but there was something about it that he didn't like.
Ilari hummed a little victory tune to himself in his head, something he remembered hearing from Zeke a long time ago, and started to rearrange the pieces into another battle from The Book.
Kiah wrinkled her nose and almost woke up as something tickled against her face. She didn't actually wake up, though, until a sharp pain in her cheek made her slap a hand to her face. She sat up and blinked confusedly, looking around for a threat but seeing only a horribly distressed Ilari hopping up and down next to her and shrilling.
*I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I had a twig- and, and and it rolled away, and I only wanted to get it back, and and!* Kiah made sense of this on her own, since he wasn't doing a good job of it himself. The twig Ilari held with the tip of his many spined tail fit with the long, thin cut she must have on a cheek to match the fine line of blood on her palm.
"You were picking it up, you mean, and you slipped."
*Yeeesss, I'm sorry!* He kept squirming guiltily and fluffing his feathers in distress. It was freakishly cute.
"Yegad, really, it's okay. It hardly hurts at all."
*But... butbut....* With sudden calm decisiveness Ilari brought his tail up and made a mirror image of the cut along his own cheekbone. *There. Is it okay now?*
Kiah put her fingers over her open mouth, both shocked and touched. "Oh, no hun, no. Don't do things like that. You have to take good care of yourself." She tried to stroke him calmingly and wipe the smudge of blood off his face, but he wasn't having any of it, squirming away and staring up at her seriously.
*But I'm sorry! Is it okay now, is it?*
"Yeah. Yeah, it's okay now. Don't worry about it anymore." Finally he relaxed and let her scoop him up comfortingly, though a last small scrap of guilt seemed reluctant to let him go. Kiah held him for a few minutes in shock.
Blazes, the poor little guy. I've got to teach him not to do things like that.
...Though it was probably the sweetest thing I've ever seen.
But little kids of all kinds are resiliant, and by the time Kiah was done wiping both of their faces off Ilari was hopping- well, bouncing- around as cheerily as usual and flicking his little wings. *So what are we gonna do today?*
"Well...." Kiah sighed, denial cracking even more. It had been eating at her for days now, the undeniable fact that she hadn't done anything in the way of finding a trip home since she'd lost the others. Taking care of Ilari was a good excuse on the surface, but really, hadn't the whole point been to raise him to be commited to the goal? And here she was using him as an excuse not to face the fact that she had no idea what to do next.
"Look at me," she muttered, "I look like I belong in this place. I'm just as dusty and tattered as everyone else now." It made her want to be sick.
*It's okay, though. We're gonna go home. It's just going to take a long time. Right?*
"Right. That's what I always say, isn't it?" Ilari nodded emphatically.
"Right. Okay. Well, how about we-"
And then, without so much warning as a damp wind, it began to pour rain.
Well. It poured rain on Kiah, anyway. Ilari, three feet away but perfectly dry, stared up at the sky in confusion. *I didn't think clouds did that....*
Kiah stepped out of the spot of extremely localized rain and looked up too, finding only the one dark spot in the whole sky. It dispersed into the otherwise pleasent weather so quickly that they both would have doubted it's ever happening, if Kiah wasn't still dripping wet. And, now, steaming mad.
"AARRUGH! That's IT! I thought I was just paranoid before, but now I'm sure! I'm being singled out! Come on, Ilari. You want to know what we're going to do now? I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to get to the bottom of this curse of mine."
*But what about....*
"Nothing we try to do to get home is going to work while someone has it in for us." Indignant and wrathful, Kiah put her pack on- let it get wet, who cares- set Ilari on top of it, and started stomping resolutely back towards the trees.
---------------------
"Well? Do you see anything?"
*Still climbing!* Ilari called down from somewhere in the top of the tallest tree they could find nearby, too thin for Kiah to climb it safely but no big deal at all for the little dragon. His long thin shape was perfect, and he could use his spines for extra security here and there.
*Okay! Wooo. It's high up here! An' windy.*
"But do you see anything... weird? Weirder than normal-weird?"
A long pause passed.
"Well?"
*Ummmmmm.... lots of all kinds of treeeess... and birds... and there's a mountain far away....*
Kiah sighed. Nothing she hadn't seen herself from the ground.
*And the top of a really shiny buildiiiiing....*
She perked up at that. "Shiny? Shiny how?"
*It's just the very top of it showing, but it looks white and round and it's got little glittery gold bitsies on it. But it's really, really far away. I just notice because the gold bits are shiny.* There was some rustling and scraping, and then Ilari hanging upside down from a branch with his tail and peering hopefully at Kiah. *Is that a good enough something?*
"Hun, it's perfect." Exactly what she'd been hoping for- it sounded like it had the potential to be a temple, which would explain especially observant deities nearby. "Which way was it? Point for me." He dropped down and pointed excitedly with his tail. Kiah fished a tiny, battered old compass out of her little hip pouch, shivered with the pang of homesickness that came with her feeling the paper of the note Markin had given her the day everything started, and checked the direction.
"Okay. Northwest it is. You said it's really far?" More emphatic nodding made Kiah sigh. "I appreciate Rais having taught me what fruit is safe to eat and what isn't, and I appreciate the fact that there's enough to be found easily. But once we get out of here, I don't think I'll ever eat fruit again." She let herself sigh one more time, then picked Ilari back up and started walking.
*Is this an Adventure? Like Zeke used to talk about?*
"Sure, why not. But if I hear a trumpet, so help me, I'll- nevermind."
-use your spines as earplugs rather than put up with any more of this curse, she finished silently to keep from upsetting him.
------------------
*Kiiiaaaah?*
"Yeeeees?" The questions never stopped, did they? But that was okay. It kept the incessant trudging along from getting boring, and besides, most of Ilari's quesions we're surprisingly intelligent.
*I bet your parents miss you, don't they?*
Blazes. Parents. Back home they knew better than to ask her stuff like this. "Um, they might. Yeah, sure. Sure they do. Why?"
*Oh. Well I think mine miss me, a little. I remember something like that. Though Daddy was pretty calm about it.*
Kiah whistled quietly. She'd never thought about that. Poor Ilari and his parents, getting hit with some odd dimensional fluctuation out of nowhere. "Wow, I'm sorry hun."
*Oh it's okay. I'll see them someday. Poor Daddy though, he was really, really upset.*
"Hmm? I thought you said your daddy was calm about the whole thing." Best not to question how he knew these things, she figured. Probably dragonstuff.
*Oh, he was, but my other daddy didn't want any of us to go.*
"Your other daddy."
*Mmmyep, I have two. Kinda funny, isn't it?* He giggled, picking up on Kiah's not knowing how the heck to react to that.
"Well hey, why not," she eventually decided on.
*Yeah, but I'll see them again som- oooh! Lookit!* Kiah could feel Ilari bouncing and fidgeting excitedly. *I can see the white!*
Sure enough, squinting straight ahead revealed glimpses of dingy white, mauled by moss and time.
And it's about time. My feet are about to fall off and pass out of their own accord.