Post-ATRHF scrap, and updates

Post-After The Rain... Scrap

It was almost twelve-thirty and Xenia still hadn’t shown up. Takis sighed, leaning his head back against the smooth white stone of the column he stood against. He was hungry and sore, and patience at this point was only a word to scoff at. A couple months ago, he might have started to worry. A couple of months ago he was wary of letting her use the bathroom unaccompanied, let alone embarking out into a city on her own. But now, a couple months later, he was just pissed off.

It amazed him how much of a pain in the ass the Princess could be. Takis knew about half the time she was doing it on purpose just to irritate him. These were also the times when the choice between ripping her head off and ripping her clothes off was all too easy – their make-up sex, like all their other sex, was unbelievable. But there were other times when the Princess in Xenia came out and it was all he could do to keep from throttling her. Takis was half inclined to write the King of Cyprine a very strongly worded letter about his children’s upbringing.

Of course, that would completely defeat all of their attempts to continue evading the special guard units King Stylianos IV sent out to search for his missing daughter. And that was really no good, either.

The necklace, once they’d picked off all the jewels, divided up the gold filigree that made up the base, and melted it down into little coins, had turned out to offer them a pretty sum indeed. Half of it Takis distributed to his people in the city, to do with as they please, and half of it he kept. Xenia’s money had held them over for about two months, but another two months after that they were still living off her bride price with plenty more where that came from. The coins and occasional precious gems they pawned didn’t look anything remotely like the necklace they’d originally made up. If the King’s guards were looking for traces, he certainly wouldn’t find them that way.

Chara slinked up from behind him and rubbed against his legs. Takis scowled, glancing down at the big cat, ignoring the happy purr she gave him in greeting. In the five months they’d been away from Cyprine, the leopard cub had nearly doubled in size. Her coat was a gorgeous golden orange, spotted over liberally in inky black.

“I’m going to kill her,” he told the cat seriously. “And then I’m going to eat you.”

“Don’t be such a bully,” Xenia admonished gently, coming up behind him. She wore a plain linen robe in the style of the current city they were in, one-shouldered and with a countering slit in the skirt. No jewelry decorated her neck, her arms, or her ears, and her sandals were simple leather. Her hair was short, left to curl naturally around her face, with no product or perfume of any kind. There was nothing decorative about her at all, and even so, Takis felt his mouth dry up a little as he looked at her.

“Where have you been?” He asked, crossing his arms sulkily to make up for the way he still reacted to her presence.

She crouched down, allowing Chara to nuzzle her chin affectionately before glancing up at him. “What part of the word ‘surprise’ don’t you understand?”

He frowned down at her to hide the little shiver of pleasure that went up his spine whenever he thought about her going out of her way to do something for him. It didn’t happen often. “The part where you’re half an hour late.”

Xenia smiled indulgently at him, easily seeing through his moody responses. “Cranky, isn’t he?” She asked Chara, scratching the leopard behind the ears.

The leopard yawned widely in response, exposing her pointy canines, and flicked her tail leisurely, as if to say, “Well, he is just a man.”

Takis tossed his hair out of his eyes – unlike Xenia’s, his had just been getting longer – and straightened. “I’m hungry. You didn’t eat, did you?”

Xenia shook her head and gave the leopard one last scratch before rising. “No, I thought you might get testy.” At his responding glare, she smiled and shrugged. “I was right. Where do you want to eat?”

He was tempted to spank her, even though he knew she had the upper hand on this one. “Let’s just grab something off the street and go back to the room,” he suggested, pulling on Chara’s tail playfully. “I need a nap.”

“All right,” she agreed.

Before they departed from the little alcove, he snuck his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, moving his mouth over hers. She didn’t like it when he kissed her in public – not because she didn’t like being kissed by him, but because she thought it brought unwanted attention to them. Even while she’d turned out to be a natural at his kind of underground lifestyle, he knew the fear of being caught still lurked in the back of her mind.

If he was honest, the fear was his as much as it was hers.

He kissed her forehead after, and held her close for a little longer. “So when do I get my gift?”

“You know, ‘surprise’ doesn’t necessarily denote a gift of some kind.”

Takis sighed exaggeratedly and moved away from her. “What on earth have I done to deserve this? You have been put on this planet to torture me.”

“You could only be so lucky.” Xenia whistled at Chara as she followed after him. The leopard had taken to licking herself during their moment of intimacy, but at her mistress’s beckoning had sprung up and trotted after them.

It had been a long morning. The only nourishment he’d had was a bit of bread and some fruit much earlier, as the sun was rising. As it was now, it felt like his stomach was about to turn in on itself. The trip he’d made, though, was a necessary one. They’d been in Carthos for about a week now, but every morning he got up with the sun and checked the city’s two harbors for the royal flag of Cyprine. From there he would move into the markets for the gossip, make a stop at the council house for official notices, and finish at the citadel in the center of the city where he eyed the new and old mercenaries that lined up for work. When all of that was done, he went back to the room he and Xenia had rented out and they would usually go to lunch. Sometimes Xenia came with him, sometimes she slept in and mended clothes, restocked their provisions, or exchanged coins for the appropriate currency.

That morning she’d broken the pattern and ventured out on her own, promising him that she’d return around noon with a surprise.

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That's where it ends. I started writing this without really knowing where a sequel would go at all, and now that I've actually sat down and planned out most of what I want to happen, this bit of fiction is completely obsolete. But it'll probably be some time before you see anything having to do with Takis and Xenia (I'm actually about 90% certain at this point that 1, it will be about ten chapters total, and 2, I will write the whole of it before posting any of it) so this is for your reading enjoyment in the meantime.

I've been feeling very creative lately, and since I'm a terrible student I've been brainstorming for new and old story ideas and writing in a couple others rather than spending more time doing research for my summer course. Sadly, Diamonds and Dust is not one of them - to write in that I cannot be in the middle of something else (i.e. summer course). But the good news is that there's only two weeks left of that, so hopefully you'll be seeing part 2 of chapter eleven sometime in the next month or so.

I want to write a post about how much I love a good fantasy story, and how much I miss writing it, so expect something like that at a later date. In fact, I might just do a little mini-series on specific genres... you know, with all this free time I have. ;]