Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Tender as a Human ❯ Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Starts Here!!!

 

THE next day, Jeordin helped Seluna get back onto Old Fellow. This time she actually accepted his help. Seluna could speak limitedly now, but she still lacked the practice to be able to say difficult words like “spaghetti” or “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Actually, Seluna's fast progression had Jeordin puzzled. How had she gone from not talking to being almost completely verbalized so quickly? It was almost as if she knew the words already. Jeordin just shook his head.

“So, will you tell me anything about yourself now?” He asked, hoping that learning to talk a little had loosened Seluna's tongue.

“No,” she replied. Seluna still had a little trouble making the sound exactly right, but Jeordin could still detect the disdain in her voice. He just sighed. She would tell him eventually, but getting annoyed with her now wouldn't help anything.

“That's fine for now, but eventually you'll have to tell me something about your past.”

“You wool-dn't believe me.” Seluna said, stumbling over “wouldn't” a little. Jeordin stopped and turned around, genuinely curious now.

“What?”

Seluna just stared at him, looking like she regretted having replied at all. Suddenly, she snapped up, staring off the side of the road.

“Danger!”

“Ha, I'm not falling for that!” Jeordin said. Then an ogre leapt out of a bush and beat him on the head with a club.

 

Seluna leapt into action then. She growled as menacingly as her human voice would allow. Old Fellow just stood there like a dolt. The ogre turned to her and smiled, baring large teeth. Seluna really wished she still had her dragon form now. She would have crushed this pathetic ogre with her scaly paws and burned him with her fiery breath. As it was, she was useless.

The ogre raised his club to hit Seluna, but Jeordin hadn't been knocked out. He grabbed its ankle and tried to pull it down. But this accomplished nothing against the ogre's superior weight. The ogre turned away from Seluna and peeled Jeordin's hand off its ankle.

Seluna jumped onto the ogre's back, biting at its neck with her uselessly round human teeth. They were naturally ineffective against the creature's thick gray skin.

The ogre started shaking, trying to dislodge her. Seluna grabbed onto his neck tightly from under his armpits; her puny human arms barely fit, but the move limited hi movements enough so that he was stumbling around instead of lumbering skillfully while trying to knock her off with his massive arms.

“Jeordin! He dropped his club; get him in the eye with it, then bash him on the side of his head!”

Even though he was human and not as strong as Seluna was even as a hatchling, their combined strengths were enough to stagger the ogre. Seluna scratched at its face, cursing her useless human nails. Hissing in displeasure as one nail tore, she curled her fingers and hit the ogre under his ear.

The ogre dropped like a rock. Jeordin stared at her, and she stared at the ogre. The place where she had hit the ogre was the one surefire way to kill a dragon with a small blow, and it had worked as well on this creature as on a fellow dragon.

Jeordin stared in disbelief. “How did you do that?” he whispered. How had Seluna known exactly what to do? How had she even known the ogre was about to attack? She just stared down at the ogre with slight disgust and growled at a broken nail. Jeordin saw that now Seluna had a semblance of balance, she had acquired an animalistic grace that puzzled him. He crossed his arms and scowled, it was time for some answers.

“Seluna, I have let you get away with being secret so far, but this is just too much. I want to know how you knew that ogre was coming, and I want to know where you learned to fight like that.”

Seluna narrowed her eyes at him. “Things are not always what they seem.” Seluna turned around and started to look for Old Fellow, who had run off into the bushes after Seluna leapt off of him.

Jeordin sighed at her cryptic answer, he could tell that he had almost enough pieces to finish the puzzle, but he just couldn't grasp the big picture. He walked after Seluna. Jeordin would have to think about this new piece of information for a while. He probably wouldn't get any more of an answer out of Seluna for a long time either.

 

*********

They were traveling over the hill lands just beyond the village now; Jeordin had made Seluna camp outside, and had even expected to get into an argument with the strange woman, but was surprised when she not only didn't argue, but picked out a spot to sleep without him having to tell her what to do. And she warned him about the ant pile over where he was thinking to sleep… yet another thing that he had no idea how she knew.

This was beginning to frustrate him! Why she wouldn't just tell him what she had been before they met, who she had been, what her secret was, Jeordin felt that it would completely ease his mind. Seluna was completely foreign ground as far as he was concerned; she acted like no woman he had ever met, and like no gypsy or Lady he had ever heard of.

Then, they came to a town.

It was obvious to Jeordin that Seluna had never been in a town before. She had seemed a little uneasy in the village, but he had taken it as a matter of course; the woman had been wearing his clothing, and neither of them knew the other's name at the time. Back at the village, everyone was minding someone else's business, and Jeordin knew that the villagers were talking about them as soon as they were out of earshot. He just thought Seluna had been self-conscious.

But now it was obvious that she was nervous because of all the people; wherever she was from, people apparently did not get as close to each other as they did in a town this crowded. He watched Seluna carefully, and saw her wrinkle her nose at quite a few things. Past the live goods on the edge of town and further into the marketplace, he had to stop her several times from taking things from stalls like apples or tacky and cheap bracelets. She didn't even know about money and property rights!

He knew that his work was cut out for him.

He knew that it would take forever to teach her everything she needed to know to act human.

He knew it would be the hardest thing he had ever done to do the teaching.

And he knew that he had to do it.

And he felt the sense of impending doom settle upon his shoulders as he realized this.