After the Tea

Note: This story does make implied sexual jokes. I kept them mild.

A quiet trickle flowed into the tiny cup, a mini waterfall from the black and purple teapot held by dark purple hands. The smell of jasmine curled into the air just as the electric crackle of barely controlled lightning and verdant petrichor promising fertile fields. Her hands filled her own cup then before placing the teapot in its place. A gentle flick and her kimono sleeve was once more perfectly placed and she placed the tea before her companion.

“Are you sure you are well? You are so dark and charged. I’ve not seen you so for several lifetimes, last during that war.” The rumble of thunder and deeps of treasure filled caverns tested the air.

“As well as I ever can be.” The air crackled with her words and the scent of untended flowers past the moment of possible pollination.

They inhaled the scent of the tea, then sipped it pensively. The fire crackled quietly in the stove, not daring to accidentally challenge the dragon. The dragon in turn kept her energy tightly to her instead of spreading through the land around her as was her purpose. Slowly they worked their way through the pot, a little at a time, until it offered the last drop.

He watched the drop carefully as it hung on the end of the spout, then lost the battle to gravity. Said drop fell heavier than it normally would have, then dispersed within her cup. It darkened, shapes swirled slowly in her tea, then they were lost to the darkness. Slender fingers delicately picked up the cup after his signal, resplendent with deadly claws that had grown a centimeter during their meeting and dripping a bit of venom from irritated glands.

“Another crack?”

“Yes. I haven’t been arsed to fix it yet. I don’t have the… something for it.” She looked away and blushed, her eyes turning a shade of red that he had only experienced prior to floods and village leveling as she ripped into another dragon.

He raised his eyebrow higher at the blush. “Those do not match. Blush does not go with feral eyes.”

“If you knew the situation it would make more sense, but I will not elucidate.” She sighed, her eyes remaining the same. “It is mine to deal with when I can do so without feeling…” Her head drooped over the cup; feathers fell from her wings and plumage; her ears pressed down to her head enough to disappear. “That will just crack it and poison me more.”

“You have been meditating?”

“Yes, trying. Cleansing too, and looking at the situation with different viewpoints taking into account they still don’t understand what a storm dragon fully is.” She drank the last of the tea in her cup and set it down carefully before beginning the process of cleaning. “It is spreading though, the longer the imbalance continues.”

“Just make sure you do then, instead of leaving it like those other unpatched ones. Not like that village you…” He trailed off.

“There is still pain from their rejection.” She nodded, flexing her fingers as if the blood still covered them. “I will have to approach it very differently. And with the flow of time.” She dried the cups, then the teapot, put them away methodically and firmly. She sparked and scorched the box.

“It must have been very close to your core,” He commented, “ for you to scorch an innocent box.”

“Too close, and unexpected though it should have been. It is nothing important.”

“Then why tea?”

“I am lonely, and need company to not fall into the same trap as all those years ago. I can’t afford to.” She rose as gracefully as she could, knee walked her way to the shelf where the box belonged, then slid it slowly home. “And being in heat, it’s the worst time for such disturbances.”

“Being a kami is not easy, embodied or not.” He agreed. “And dangerous.”

“Hai. Hai…” she knee walked around again and bowed to the kamidana in the room. “And emotions and hearts are also storms to master. I need strength. I can’t have what I need.”

He nodded and made his obeisance as well next to her, holding the pose and making his prayers for both himself and his companion and charge, waiting.

The pair withdrew from the teahouse, then unfurled from their human shapes to their proper forms. They picked their way to the pond, one foot set precisely in front of the other. Flowers sprang from the steps of each, but those behind the female withered and darkened, drooping listlessly. They settled at the water’s edge and gazed companionably into the glassy surface dotted with lotus. Her scent spread and he consciously cloaked her with his own, though never touched her.

She needed touch badly, the constant rubbing of any part of herself spoke more to him than she knew, but not his. Likewise, though she needed touch desperately she did not seek any sort of his as she would under other situations. Nor did she dare enter a toe in the water lest her poison spread. Flowers and vines continued to sprout, flourish, then die before reaching their natural zenith, hitting a scythe that should not have been there.

Time did as time does, flow and congeal in strange patterns at its own pace. He sat with her as she shed her silent tears, the bloodlust fading from her eyes tear by tear.

“I want my father…” The words ghosted into the silence, then wavered like a phantom train sweeping behind a courtesan, “and my mother.”

He skimmed a pebble, free to move now that she’d spoken. They counted the skips, then he skimmed another. “That can be arranged, and the travel.”

She nodded, gazing longingly into the pond. “I’m so dry…”

“As always happens when your wellspring is blocked.”

“I won’t open it, not yet. It must be invoked.” Two stones skimmed and crossed paths, and she smiled a bit at his antics. “You’ve always been good with those.”

“I have to put that frustration somewhere. Might as well put it in a stone, toss it out, and probably cause a little chaos. I used to try skipping stones on houses, but that just resulted in a lot more grain needed next year, if you get the drift.”

She laughed. “All those human babies suspiciously had your ways, did they not?”

“Not just the human young.” He waggled his eyebrows as he had when they were young.

“You need a mate.”

“Yes, I do. It’s that time of the year. Know anyone that will be willing to put up with the puns?”

She sighed and rubbed her face, her waving whiskers betraying the laughter she tried to hide.

“I thought not. It’s ok. Someone has to make sure there’s more fishes.”

“That’s going to be awkward if any of them make it through the dragon gate. ‘Who’s your sire?’ ‘I’m told a pebble fell and touched mother, and then she laid a bunch of eggs, of which I came.’”

“Two. Only two so far. I need more stones.”

She rolled on her back and balled up, cackling. “So you admit you need more stones.”

“Now THAT’S the girl I know. Better.”