It's almost 12:00 and I haven't the time to proofread, so this might be awful for all I know. Apologies for any out of character-ness, or other mistakes. I'll come back and fix things later.
For TLC Ship Weeks
Week five, day six
Theme: Stories
Storyteller
The first time Cinder sells a story, it's in the Travelling Market, under duress.
She does not usually sell her stories. They are for her, and her only—scrawled messily in cheap quality paper, locked away in an easily breakable desk drawer. Sometimes she reads them aloud to her empty apartment, sometimes she reads them by her sister's grave.
Cinder is a mechanic, not a storyteller. Her stories tend to be incomplete mostly, nonsensical at other times. She writes them because it amuses her to do so—just a passing hobby.
In the Market, the silky eyed kitsune bare their teeth and demand payment for their stolen mirror. Beside her, her friend, the sticky-fingered Captain laughs nervously. The kitsune demand a pint of his blood, and a slice of her soul.
"Absolutely not," Cinder says.
The kitsune hiss. Cinder crosses her arms. The Captain tries to slink away.
"A story then," one of the kitsune suggests, pointing at Cinder. "You have far too many swimming in your blood. Tell us one."
-o-
She chases Thorne off, and tells the kitsune a story about a girl who finds an injured rain spirit shaped like a dragon and takes him home. It's a story Cinder started writing only a week ago and it's far from complete. She came up with it in a dream.
She halts when the rain spirit transforms into a raven-haired boy because that's as far as she's written. The kitsune frown, grumble, and urge her to come back on the next Market day—a month later.
She finds Thorne waiting for her at the edge of the Market, only a little apologetic, and a whole lot curious.
"You have stories swimming in your blood?" he asks.
She punches him on the arm.
-o-
She comes home and there's a blue and white dragon curled contently on her writing desk.
It's not too big—about the size of a house cat, with a long, long, long tail—but it's very beautiful; blue like a sapphire, flecked in grey and cerulean. Its eyes are brown and it has two horns, antler-like—jet black.
The dragon wakes up when she screams, ducks deftly when she throws her shoe at it. She stumbles back and it blinks at her with intelligent, devious eyes. Its tail flicks once, and Cinder swears she sees it smile.
-o-
The dragon will not leave.
She tries leaving it under a bridge. She tries dumping it with Thorne. She tries giving it away to her cousin. She even tries to sell it in the next Travelling Market the following month. It comes back each time, looking ever so smug.
The kitsune in the Market dismiss her concerns and demand the rest of their story.
She tells them about a curse, placed upon the rain spirit, and how the girl who found him, valiantly tries to break it.
The youngest kitsune raises a hand.
"They fall in love, yes?" she asks.
Cinder remembers the dragon sleeping in her writing desk and frowns. "No," she says.
-o-
She comes home and there's a raven-hair boy sitting on her chair, reading her stories, extracted easily from her flimsily locked drawer.
He grins when he sees her and it's a grin exactly how she imagined—or rather dreamt. Cinder struggles not to throw her shoe at him again.
He stands, and approaches her slowly—almost cautiously, still smiling, still looking ever so beautiful. He wears a sweatshirt, but it's blue and white and flecked like his dragon form. He takes her hand and kisses her cold, metal knuckles, where she can't feel his lips; yet a jolt passes through her—a current warming her veins.
"Linh-san," he says, "A pleasure to meet you."
-o-
He says his name is Kai; and he refuses to leave.
"You summoned me," he informs her simply.
"No," she says. "I did not.
His infuriating smile does not falter. "I assure you, you did. I'm not in the business of making myself a nuisance to pretty girls."
"That's funny," she quips. "You seem to be doing a pretty good job of it."
He laughs and she tells herself she does not feel it reverberating inside her ribs.
-o-
On the next Market day she tells the kisune about the almost breaking of the curse. A painful separation between the dragon and the girl occurs. They've learned to become friends, Cinder tells the kitsune.
"They're in love!" the young kitsune wails and Cinder leaves with an exasperated sigh.
-o-
The dragon keeps eating all her food and sleeping all day.
He's useless as far as she can tell. And with him being a rain spirit, it's been a wet couple of months for her. He follows her around when she goes out with an umbrella held out for her, chatting away incessantly, being funny and charming and beautiful and Cinder really, really tries to continue hating him, but he makes it a hard task.
She's no longer sure if she ever hated him in the first place.
He sits beside her in her tiny market stall, clearing a space for himself among the clutter of wires and tools and smiles at every passerby and flirts with all her customers. He doubles her sales but she frowns disapprovingly anyway. Or, well, she tries to.
"Why won't you leave?" she mumbles, almost to herself.
He leans towards her and she feels her face heat up instantly. "Do you even want me to?"
-o-
It rains on the day Travelling Market returns to her corner of the world so Kai follows her there too, umbrella on hand.
He's flirting with her ever so slightly and she's aware of it but indulges him. And no, it's not because she likes it, and she's starting to like him. No, it's not that at all.
She spies Thorne taking shelter in a stall full of luck charms with a pretty, blonde shopkeep, and Cinder tries to duck behind Kai to avoid being noticed but Thorne sees her anyway and shouts her name, waving enthusiastically. She catches Kai stiffen.
"Friend of yours?" he asks.
"Unfortunately," Cinder sighs.
-o-
"When will they kiss?" the ever-determined kitsune asks with a pout.
"Never," Cinder answers.
"Why?" the kitsune cries.
"Yes," Kai chirps in. "Why won't they kiss?"
"Because I say so."
Her metal hand feels too warm as she rubs her knuckles absently.
-o-
She watches him shake the rain droplets off the umbrella and without considering her reasoning blurts, "Are you cursed?"
He pauses, fingers tightening on the plastic handle. He smiles at her when he raises his head. "A little," he says, trying to be nonchalant.
"Is that…is that why you won't leave?"
"I can't leave," he corrects her gently, as he does every time, "because you summoned me."
I didn't, she wants to say but they've had this conversation too many times now. "Is the curse that you can be summoned by…uh, by people?"
He nods.
"How do we break it?"
He opens the umbrella and rests it on the floor to dry before he walks up to her and stops just a breath away from her lips.
"A kiss," he whispers.
The room feels like it could tip over and trip her any second. He's so close, so close. She could touch that smile, she could taste it if only she leans forward just a little. If only she tips; trips.
If only she would allow herself to fall.
"I—" She doesn't know what to do with the rest of the sentence.
He breaks the moment by taking a step backward and ducking his head. "I'm sorry," he laughs. "That was mean."
Cinder doesn't move.
"It's acceptance actually," Kai tells her, eyes still cast down. He lifts a hand and cards it through his hair, leaving it all sticky-uppy. "I need to be accepted to be able to go back home."
"Easier if it was a kiss, huh?" she says half-heartedly. Too tired to be truly sarcastic, because she knows exactly what he feels.
-o-
He carries her umbrella as she shops for groceries. He eats so much, she can hardly believe it.
"Can't you make the rain stop?" she asks, trying to hold back a shiver.
He shifts the umbrella to his other hand and wraps an arm around her.
"So you can leave me all by myself in your apartment?" he says. "No thank you."
She lets his warmth settle into her skin and doesn't bother to mention that she's quite capable of carrying her own umbrella.
-o-
She watches him sleep, curled around her desk lamp. His tail twitches as he dreams. She wonders what about.
Gently as she can she gathers him up and transfers him to the sofa. She returns to her desk and picks up a blank sheet of paper and starts to write.
-o-
"Why do you keep insisting they're not in love?" the kitsune whines.
"Because," Cinder says, "they aren't."
-o-
The rain becomes a soft background noise as she grows used to it.
Cinder finds herself blocked from completing the story so she spends the hours she usually allotted to writing playing board games with Kai. He's a sour loser she discovers and it amuses her to no end.
She's so busy laughing at him that she doesn't see the glint in his eyes and doesn't catch him coil back to pounce. He tackles her to the floor and her laughter explodes in pitch as he tickles her. He's the worst loser.
She feels a warm breath on her neck, then a brush of something soft.
Her high-pitched laughter transforms into a squeak and completely on reflex, she elbows him on the stomach. He releases her with a pained oof.
She bursts into apologies but he only shakes his head, laughing between coughs.
"I believe I deserved that," he says.
"I'm sorry," she says again.
Still lying on the floor, he takes her hand and combs his fingers through hers. "Do you know what makes hurts better?"
She purses her lips even as she feels herself blush. "Please don't say a kiss."
"A story," he tells her.
-o-
She tells him her story about the dragon from the beginning and he listens intently.
It's almost complete, but she can't seem to be able to devise an ending. She's not a storyteller. She's a mechanic. She doesn't know why she's so determined to complete this story when her drawer holds dozens of others that never saw an ending.
"What do I do?" she asks him—her dragon.
He leans forward like he's about to offer a secret. She leans in as if to receive it.
"Whatever you want," he tells her.
She kisses him.
-o-
The rain picks up. His hands wrap around her waist.
She makes a soft, keening sound she's never, ever made in her life and he smiles against her lips. He tastes like the ice cream in her refrigerator, and like tea. Warm and sweet and melting. She could kiss him forever. She could just remain in his arms and never stop kissing him.
She could—
He pulls back. "Cinder I—"
"Stay!" she says. Her voice sounds small to her own ears, so she repeats herself, louder again. "Stay."
He's warm and kind and funny and silly and an awful chess player. And she needs him to stay with her.
"Oh." he whispers against her lips, eyes wide. He flickers away like a hologram for a second.
Stay.
She blinks and he's gone.
-o-
She goes back to the Travelling Market to finish her story. It's a bright, sunny day but she takes an umbrella with her. Force of habit, she tells Thorne who stays surprisingly quiet about Kai's absence.
When she reads the last line to the kitsune, the young, blue-tipped eared one bursts into tears.
"I don't c-care what you s-say," she hiccups, "they were in love!"
"Yes," Cinder says, gathering her papers, "they were."
-o-
She comes home and there's a dragon sleeping in her writing desk.
He wakes up when she places a kiss on his forehead
"I didn't summon you," she tells him.
He smiles. "No," he says. "You didn't."