|
"It's not my fault you're so darned big in this form," Ayame said with a huff. "If I could move you into the hut," and if my tail would show up, "this wouldn't hurt so bad."
Ayame softened her tone. "Just bear with me a minute, okay? The worst of the bleeding's almost stopped. Once it's stopped completely we can see about moving you inside, and then I can try to find us some food." |
The promise of food made Jade's insides ache, and he scowled. That had been a reminder he scarcely needed, and now he was even more pissed off, though not at the girl.
He attempted to gather his feet under him and rise. It was a tedious and painful task, but he didn't want to stop. As the half-breed had said, the sooner he was inside, the sooner food came, and he was ravenous. <What is your name?> he queried without any profound reason, other than to know. |
"It's Ayame," she replied. She wanted to tell him to wait, but she didn't want to be on the wrong end of his jaws if he went into a feeding frenzy, so she thought it best to let him do what he wanted. Besides, the worst of the bleeding had begun to clot over, and without her other supplies, there wasn't much else she could do.
|
<Mm. Pretty name, I suppose,> Jade murmured the thought, pawing the door open impatiently. He gave an impatient exhalation as he realized that he wouldn't fit through the door in this form, and shifted to his humanoid one promptly. Leaning against the doorway for support, he merely caught his breath for the moment.
And God, did he look a mess. Gashes and bruises everywhere, and he was paler than usual, if that was even possible. "My name is Jade," he offered, figuring that she'd wnat some sort of polite trade off. |
Ayame blushed.
"Mother said it was raining when they found me," she mumbled incoherently. No one had ever told her she had a pretty name. No one had ever really paid her any compliment whatsoever, for that matter. And Gods, was this demon good to look at. She'd never seen a male look so...amazing. "Here, let me help you." She offered a shoulder that she didn't fully expect him to lean on. |
Jade snorted, the sound much different in this form, though still quite derisive.
"I can walk on my own, young half-breed," he said dismissively. "Just give me a moment. In fact, if you want to be useful, you might try hunting." He smirked weakly to himself. "If you assume yourself up to the task." Apparently the general demon disdain for hanyou ran strong with Jade as well. Though only apparently. |
Ayame's nostrils flared. Well, excuse me, princess!
She knew most demons despised half-breeds, but dammit, she was trying to help him. "Well, then, if you'll excuse me, my lord, I will try to find something to appease your palette," she scoffed. She turned on her heel and bounded away, not even bothering to make sure Jade got in the house safely. Hopefully he would have enough sense to shut the door. I'm going to kill a sparrow and bring back the legs. Say it was all I could find. Then I'm going to leave him in that hut to rot while I feast on fish and deer. Hm. Fish. Maybe I should set some lines in that river I saw a while back. Yeah. I think I'll go do that. She veered to the right slightly and ran deeper into the forest, and soon she happened upon the branch of the river. She pulled some long fishing lines impossibly from the depths of what was left of her shorts, and in the span of fifteen minutes she had a line of no less than twenty fat, plump fish hanging from the tree next to her. Ha! And those old fools said I would never catch on to fishing! She threw the line of fish over her shoulder, missing her tail horribly, and started to run back towards the hut. About halfway back to camp, she tripped over a tangle of plants and sprawled face-first into the ground, the fish flying in the air and landing in a heap under a tree. "Yeeeeow." After rubbing her nose and checking for scrapes, Ayame examined the tangle on her ankle. She grabbed the greenery and sniffed it. Is this...? She crawled back to the place where she tripped. Small red berries dangled from long stalks amongst small white flowers. "Wild strawberries!" Ayame got excited. The last time she managed to snatch some strawberries from a village, she ended up halfway up the river with all of her clothes burned off. But if she took these, it really wasn't stealing because they didn't belong to anyone. And this was her lucky day, because there was a rather large patch of them surrounding the plants she had tripped over. And, if memory served correctly, she had some rice buried in her tail... She looked behind her with a disappointed sigh. Still no tail. Ah well, hopefully by the time I get back, my tail will have decided to reappear. She took her top off and tied it off at the bottom, then set to work picking the strawberries, placing them in her shirt. When she had gathered a generous amount, she tied the strapless side of her shirt to the strapped side and slid it over her wrist. Haha, I feel just like a fancy noble lady,with a fancy satchel, she thought, standing in the middle of the forest, half naked. I'm going to smell like strawberries for weeks. She allowed herself a childish giggle before she rounded up the fish and slung them back over her shoulder. She didn't think it was odd at all when she showed up topless back at the hut with the fish bouncing on her back and the strawberries slightly juicing in her shirt. (Gah. Sorry for such a long post. I got carried away and I couldn't stop. =P) |
Within the fifteen minutes it took for Ayame to get back, Jade had settled himself against the wall, eyes closed. He wasn't asleep, but he could give that distinct impression. Instead, he had spent a great deal of his alone-time thinking about what he had said to Ayame, and how insulted she'd seemed. Sure, he was a kitsune and liked getting a rise out of people, but should he really be trying that with her?
Probably not, he reasoned. She could starve me. And right now, as his empty stomach soon reminded him, he couldn't afford that. He needed the energy to heal. But that wasn't just it, was it? He was feeling guilty about the fact that he had insulted someone so willing--if so unsuccessful on a lot of it--to help him. A hanyou no less. After all, he wasn't some uptight demon lord or anything who had loads of success in everything. Taiyoukai or not, he didn't live the greatest life, and that was because of how he was constantly on the run from his family. Sighing, he reached up to scratch lightly behind one ear, wincing at the pain the movement brought, then stopping altogether when he realized that particular ear was tattered fairly badly. "I just can't win, can I?" he grumbled, readjusting himself. When Ayame walked in though...he found himself reconsidering that statement. Not only was she revealing some impressive assets and so skimpily clad down below that any man would jump her, but she was carrying a bag of STRAWBERRIES! Fish notwithstanding. "Strawberries..." he whispered reverently. "Give me some." |
"No," Ayame stated firmly. "You need protein first." She tied the strawberries firmly around her wrist. "If you can manage to get some fish down, then we can have these for--"
A loud explosion sounded directly behind Ayame as her tail blew back into existence. The force of the transformation propelled her forward and she landed flat on her face, tail in the air waving almost triumphantly, as if it were proud of itself for putting her in such a position. |
Flat on her face...in Jade's hair.
Meanwhile, other parts of her had cushioned him from damage. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one looked at it, those parts were...holyshitboobs. Out of complete surprise, he shoved Ayame back. Well, not just out of surprise, he didn't want a faceful of that right now. Of course, the shoving hurt his arms. "What...the hell?" he hissed, trying very hard not to be turned on by all this. |
Ayame turned a shade darker than the strawberries in her shirt.
"I'm soooo sorry!" she wailed, bowing down and shoving her nose into the dirt, banging her head so hard on the ground she drew blood. "I never got my transformation technique down perfectly, and sometimes things don't come back when they're supposed to, and when they do reappear it's with such force that it knocks me off my feet!" She looked up, a trickle of blood running down her forehead and in between her eyes. "I didn't hurt you too badly, did I?" She was much more worried about the fact that she might have caused further harm to his injuries than the fact that she was topless and had pretty much violated an injured man. |
Truthfully, if Jade had been more injured, he certainly didn't notice it. All he noticed was that things had gotten a tit bit nipply for a moment, and he was still in a bit of a daze.
"Uhm...I could have...helped...with that I mean. You...GOD, WOMAN! PUT SOMETHING ON, HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO CONCENTRATE??' He turned away, heat flowing to his face as his ears flattened a bit. Normally women didn't just show up topless, and although that was nice, it wasn't appropriate right now. |
Ayame's ears dropped back against her head. In her naivety, she didn't realize that other demons might be put off by the fact that she was half naked. She didn't understand the rules of social modesty, since she had been by herself more often than not since she was thirteen, when she was banished from her village. And most of the children in the village weren't required to cover themselves until it was time for their coming-of-age ceremony, when they turned sixteen.
And what does he mean, how do I expect him to concentrate. Other males have no problem chasing me from their villages no matter what I'm wearing. "Okay, if you insist," she replied, rolling her eyes behind his back. If it will make the charge happy, then I suppose I have no choice. She pulled her tail forward and reached in, digging around, pulling out pots, pans, pestles and mortars, bottles of herbs, pouches of dried grass, threads, needles, until she finally found what she was looking for. She pulled a large roll of bandages out of her tail and began to wrap her chest. "I'll have to wash my top before I can wear it again, especially if I have to tend to your wounds. It wouldn't do to have strawberry juice drip into those cuts, now would it?" she asked, staring at the demon's back as she wrapped. "I'll have to mend my shorts later. I don't understand much about healing a demon, but I shall do my best to make sure you're fully healed before you leave this hut." She made the vow as she tied off the end of the bandages, then plopped down on the ground. She sat cross legged and arranged her belongings on the floor, pausing to take a pot and more herbs from her tail. After some more rummaging, she discovered that she had dried vegetables stored in the depths of her tail. "Now, would you like a stew, or do you want me to smoke the fish?" |
"Mm. You know, there isn't much to healing a demon," Jade said matter-of-factly. "Particularly a taiyoukai. All I require is food and rest. It's worked quite well for me so far, after all. Then again--ghhk!"
He winced as a wave of burning pain worked down his raw back, but quickly attempted to compose himself. "Ah...stew would do fine," he finally decided. He would rather have it raw, but unfortunately, he didn't feel up to chewing... |
"Perfect," Ayame grinned. She did some more rummaging in her tail and produced a smallish cauldron from the furry depths. She gathered up some of her herbs and tossed them in, along with a knife and the line of fish. "I'll be right back, okay?" She practically skipped outside. Ayame loved making stew, but since more often than not it was just her eating, she never really had much of a chance to make it. It would be such a waste of food.... The kitsune wandered around the hut, searching in the brush for sticks and such that were dry enough to use for firewood. After she was satisfied with the amount of wood gathered, she dug a small hole in the ground a decent distance away from the hut and filled it with small twigs. She did some more rummaging in her tail and pulled out some flint rocks, then held them close to the twigs and banged them together. When the twigs caught the sparks, Ayame slowly fanned the embers until they turned into flames. She slowly fed the fire, putting on bigger and bigger pieces of wood, until she had a fire big enough to cook on. After a brief sprint to the stream and back to get some water, Ayame set to work skinning and boning the fish, tossing bits of flesh into the cauldron on the fire as she worked. Finally, she tossed the vegetables in and added some herbs and spices from her stash of powders and leaves, adding in some medicinal herbs after a second's consideration. |
Jade really didn't have anything to do but chill in the hut, and try not to fall asleep. While he was alone though, he wondered at how he was going to deal with the taijiya, and wiht the hanyou girl. Life had just become complicated for him, and it was his luck that caused all this.
Really, all he wanted in life was some relaxation, a meal, and some sweet ass. But you're a demon. Things are never that easy... |
Ayame poked her head into the hut to check on Jade.
"It's almost done. How are you feeling? You want to come sit by the fire or do you want me to bring you some?" |
Jade shook his head.
"I'm perfectly fine here, and in no hurry to move," he told Ayame matter of factly. "Take your time, I can be patient, believe it or not." |
Ayame nodded. "Be right back."
She skipped back outside and pulled the cauldron from the fire, then, figuring that it would be best not to leave the fire alive, kicked dirt over it until only a few smoldering embers remained. After wrapping her hands with more bandages so as not to burn herself, she carried the stew over to the hut, nudging the door closed with her foot. "Can you eat by yourself?" she asked, rummaging in her tail for her eating utensils. "I can feed you, if you'd like." Ieeeh....I'm going to have to snag another bowl somewhere, she thought as her hands bumped into the only bowl and spoon she carried with her. I'm not used to eating with other people that often... |
"My pride won't suffer that much of an indignity," Jade said with false tones. "It's fine, I can feed myself."
He raised an eyebrow as he watched the hanyou dig in her tail. Certainly, when he'd been younger he had used his rather large and bushy tail for storage space, but now his was a bit more slim and far less bulky than hers. They were probably of different strains of fox, most likely. All the same... "Do you keep everything in there?" he had to ask. At least questions were a welcome distraction from pain and dizziness. |
"Hn." Ayame nodded. "I have no other place to keep things, right?" She motioned to her clothes, or, in this instance, her lack of.
She used the spoon to dish some stew into the bowl and handed it to Jade. "Here. Eat up while it's hot." |
"And...it never occurred to you that you could make yourself a bag with spare cloth? Please dont' consider shredding what you have left to preserve your modesty, but all the same."
Jade took the bowl, finding it surprisingly heavy. His arms ached as he supported the thing, but he didn't drop it at least. Bowing his head politely in thanks for the food, Jade wasted no time in both completely disregarding the use of any eating utensils and just chugging the soup down. It burned against his throat and his tongue far too much for him to even think of drinking it all in one go though. Far from it, after a few swallows, he ended up spitting a great deal out to the side, having had the foresight to turn from Ayame before the inevitable shower of stew streamed from his mouth involuntarily. |
Ayame leapt up and place a hand on Jade's back.
"Are you alright? You shouldn't have tried to eat it so fast!" she said gently, rubbing his back, taking care around the gashes. |
Jade realized that quickly enough, and felt uncomfortable enough having sprayed soup all over the place. He edged away from Ayame a fraction of an inch.
"I'm...I'm fine," he said, clearing his throat. "Stop worrying, it's ridiculous..." |
"I'm going to worry about you, silly," Ayame said, unwrapping the bandages from her hands and wiping Jade's mouth with them. "As long as you are in the state that you are in, I will worry about you." She took the bandages from the other hand and wiped his forehead.
"Now, try again, slowly this time." She placed the spoon in the bowl and held it back out to Jade. |
| All times are GMT. The time now is 07:15 AM. |