His Quest for Raine

Practice with Brandon

Nerranne feels alive and all knowing. An energy seems to reach from the depths of the earth’s core, far past the ground, just above where she laid in Melchoir’s thick arms. It nicked at her scales, sending shockwaves of power through her that she could neither place the sensation or give a word to describe it really. It was just there. 

As if it’s reading her mind, her movements. It feels what she does, Raine thinks anyway, as if they are one being and while the thought happens to evolve within her mind, Raine is almost positive that she’s wrong. 

The forest fought her. The land itself called to her and waged war on them. It threw landslides and let out terrible darknesses it must harbor elsewhere to have called upon such evils… such power… There could be no way she and Nerranne were truly connected, Raine assured herself. 

All the while Melchoir held her tightly to him. Content, it seemed, that she was willingly tucked underneath him still instead of playfully challenging him while the sunset completely. She should be, she thinks, but this is nice. His closeness comforts her past what she can do herself as she mulls over Brandon and her conversation from earlier. 

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do what you’re suggesting,” Raine said and shook her head. 

Raine bit her lip within her human form to show that she would consider trying. At least then Brandon would be able to see what the problem was to their initial plan. Raine then shifted into a sparrow, her wings aflame, flickering wildly behind the tips of her plumage. She then attempted to force the little bird she transformed into to pick up the blade he held out for her. 

“I’m almost certain that,” Raine squeaked, her voice seemed to shrink with her size, surprising the both of them. 

Brandon was no help after that. He could see the way her thin talons scraped against the engraved metal he held, hopeful in each chance she took at it. He could see her frustration that built as she continuously failed to grab, let alone lift it… but he was most entertained with the squeak she made while she spoke. His laughter built in his chest and heaved through him even though he tried to hide it.

While it was a valiant effort and he did turn away from her to cover his mouth as if he was coughing, Raine knew better. Peter used to do the same thing when she got him going in one of his Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. 

Peter was at times the fun in life she had missed through all of hers. 

It was nice to see it shine through Brandon after all they had been through. He was dealing with great changes of his own too. Raine stopped to imagine how Peter would have taken stopping all he knew to become a life source for a dragon. She rolled her eyes at herself knowing full well that he would have been down for that immediately if not sooner, but then she would have never been able to have been Melchoir’s soulmate. He would have lived out his last life cycle alone… and Raine? Now that she knew she was a celestial, would that have meant a different life for her too? 

Raine frowned while her thoughts deepened only to be thrown from them as Brandon came back to her. His laughter was gone, or at least controlled then, concern etched across his features, he regarded her. 

“Hey,” Brandon called her attention to him once more. “What’s wrong?”

Raine shook her head, assuring him it was nothing but Brandon wasn’t the type to take her word for it. 

“Something’s wrong, Raine,” he huffed. “Is it because I was laughing? Because if it was you have to know…”

“It wasn’t that,” Raine cut him off. 

“You need to,” he replied, trying to control the spreading grin that widened across his face again. His eyebrows lifted up high onto his forehead as he spoke, “Maybe just shift back. I can’t take you seriously like this.”

“Why?” Raine questioned then shifted back into her human form. 

“Because you sound like a chipmunk,” he replied, only to be cut off. 

“Chipmunks don’t speak,” Raine countered. 

“I take it you grew up in a place without televisions,” Brandon retorted, clearly expecting an answer far from what he got. 

His face fell, solemnly aware of how her past lives had shaped her. 

Raine's current life didn’t have her in front of a television long. She usually saw them in electronic shops all playing the same program to show their device’s quality or settings. Otherwise, her life didn’t really revolve around stories made up by others, whether as written or digitalized fiction which she realized may have been an odd thing to say given his very wary response to it. 

“It’s fine. I don’t really think I missed much,” Raine teased while she tried lightening the mood. 

Her voice was back to normal now and even she was happy it was. He seemed to smile at her but didn’t know where to go from there. 

“Anyway,” Brandon said, jumping away from that conversation. 

Honestly, she was glad he did. Her history was simply not one she wanted to revisit. All she truly wanted was to make sure Peter was alright and check on him. Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true. She wanted to give him an in, to learn about her in the way that they pretended to. He deserved a chance to see a real dragon and not just her, Melchior too. He deserved the chance to go on a real quest and given the power she had within her, Raine felt the need to give that to him, no matter the cost.

“I don’t think you have to physically carry it being that you’re raw energy,” Brandon added, clearing his throat as he spoke. “I think you can… this is going to sound stupid,” he stopped himself from saying it. 

“Just tell me,” Raine urged him. 

“Alright, alright…” he replied and ran his fingers through his hair. “I think you can absorb the blade into you like turn it into energy so that you can hold it without having to hold it. Do you understand what I mean?”

At the time Raine thought he was nuts, but as she tried other items that happened to be around them at the time, like flowers in the grass that she had never seen before disappear at her touch and reappear as she willed them to, Raine then understood what it was he was trying to say. The blade though, was far larger than the flowers and heavier too. Another concern she had was if she could hurt herself while transforming, given that she was holding such a large object. 

Practicing with sticks became her new objective, that, and reducing her size while holding the item. The more she trusted herself, the less scary it had become. Her nervousness, she figured, had stopped her from a great many things, Raine thought. She focused on getting to Peter, absorbed a tree branch, roughly the size of her blade, then pushed herself to shift into her sparrow form and felt no pain whatsoever. 

“I’m ready,” she squawked then sighed knowing full well that she would have to wait for Brandon to stop belly laughing at her response. 

Except, the only one holding her back now was Melchoir. Raine still needed to assure him that she would be fine on her own and that she would find her way back to him, that she wouldn’t leave him forever. He had waited long enough, Raine reminded herself, still nestled in his embrace. She still heard the thrum of Nerranne forest communicating with her in it’s special way, responding to her every thought too which was honestly hard to ignore. She wondered if Melchoir could hear it too or if it was only something she could pick up on, but decided to address it at a later time. 

Speaking up about leaving had to be first.