His Quest for Raine

Falling From Grace

=======

Melchoir 

=======

Ignoring Brandon’s warnings in the background of his own mind, Melchoir let his anger slip.

Raine wasn’t listening to him as he expected her to. 

Her body was being just as erratic as her mind and it showed.

“It reached you, didn’t it?” Melchoir grumbled as he lifted himself off the ground, his tail thrashing through the air to reclaim his own balance as he beat the air with his thick, large wings. 

“The zap?”

“Whats a zap?”

“Its like,” Brandon’s mind fizzled with frustration given the very fact that he couldn’t have possibly not have known what the word zap meant. 

“What is zap?” Melchoir ripped Brandon back into his thoughts. 

“It’s like a shock, or kind of like electricity tapping your skin. Passing through you? I don’t know!” 

Melchoir snorted as he pushed on, trying to reach Raine. If he could only reach her and explain...

“It was more than a zap!” Melchoir replied to Brandon’s bickering inside his own head. 

Brandon elbowed Melchoir in his mind, making the dragon shake his armored head in response, “I thought that was her…”

“You can’t be that stupid,” Melchoir seethed. “The ground can’t shock someone.”

“Uh huh, what do you call lightning, du--” Melchoir shook his head again, wildly to make Brandon stop talking. 

He didn’t need both of them ganging up on him. It seemed to be a human thing, he told himself. A very unwise human thing, he growled without responding in words. 

Melchoir flew quickly after Raine, pushing his body harder than he had gone in a long time. He could feel the way the air seemed to pummel into him as his large body lumbered through it. 

“Why did you tell her this was a good idea?”

“I didn’t,” Brandon fought back. “You’re just not listening. You do that, you know!” 

Hearing Brandon carry on about it made Melchoir uneasy. Light from Raine’s core began to build around her body, effortlessly lifting her; taking her away from him. 

His heart raced only faster to witness her actually leaving him. 

She was going.

“Show me you can love what you can’t control,” she spoke softly as her form took that of her shooting star, “and then I’ll return to you.”

That little ball of light grew bigger, then flashed across the sky. Her speed was untouchable. Certainly not a speed he was familiar with at all, and that’s when it hit him. She really could come and go as she pleased. 

Melchoir halted his movement, flapping his wings to stay in the space that he had last seen her just to pretend it was all an act for attention. He was giving, he thought. He was keeping her off of the ground where Nerranne’s grounds were disrupting her comfort. Melchoir thought she knew…

“Well, well, well…” Brandon pushed his luck with Melchoir. 

“If you’d like to keep your life, I would suggest dropping it,” Melchoir challenged. 

“You take my life, you die,” Brandon teased. 

“You don’t know that,” Melchoir bit back, then stopped his wings at once. Their altitude halted as if they were weightless, then plummeted dramatically. 

What Melchoir didn’t see coming was Brandon’s ability to keep his cool through the drop. It was as if the human could see right through him. That wasn’t true though. Melchoir could control his own mind. He could lock his own secrets away and open them if he so chose to. 

“You know you’re acting like a stupid human right now, too?” Brandon snorted at the way Melchoir allowed them to continue to fall, nearing the treetops. 

“Is that right?” Melchoir rolled over to his belly to see where they were exactly. 

“Yeah, we have this stage where we’re complete idiots and scream for what we want until we have to work things out on our own or be sent to timeout. In our world, we call them toddlers,” Brandon said, his voice irritated Melchoir’s mind. “I think I might call you Toddy from now on.”

Melchoir shot out his wings on either side of them catching the pair before they crashed into the trees below. For the ones that were simply too close, he spit fire and tore up the ground causing Brandon to choke on the rest of his message. 

Once grounded, flames reached high into the sky. Embers flew around like confetti as if it were a celebration that Melchoir didn’t kill himself after all. He could feel Brandon ready to start up again and hoped he could strike some sort of fear into the human to tell him otherwise.

But Brandon was his life source, which meant they shared a soul. One that was born to them specifically. Brandon was essentially him without a tortured past and as a fleshy blood bag. 

“That settles it,” Melchoir heard Brandon tut.

“Should I even ask?” Melchoir grumped on, tail whipping cracked trees to burn the ground he expected to lay on… alone…

“Yes,” he could feel the way the man grinned and it bothered him to the core. “But I know you won’t, so I’ll tell you anyway.”

“Great,” Melchoir replied sarcastically, then laid down on a stack of burning trunks. 

Nothing could replace his mate, but this would have to do. 

“You’re now known to me as a hot Toddy,” Brandon laughed. 

Melchoir sighed in response. 

“Raine’s going to love it,” Brandon continued, rambling on about how he’s been able to spend some time with her as himself without this moody and broody bullshit he claimed Melchoir did. 

“You know I’m with you when you do these things, right? Tell me you know that.”

“I do, but you hide away like it’s not important. Which makes your bitching before make more sense now,” Brandon nodded at himself. 

“Oh? How so,” Melchoir asked in a dismissive tone. 

“You’re doing it again.”

Melchoir sighed, exasperated by what Brandon was going on about. “Will you just get on with it, man?”

“You, out of all of your time being with her, called her a stupid human and that is why she’s mad and left and you’re now a hot toddy.”

Hearing his own words back to him as Brandon repeated exactly what he said made Melchoir cringe. 

“I thought she would stop and stay,” Melchoir grumbled in response. 

“No woman stays after that. And,” he added with enthusiasm, “they usually throw something or come at you with a weapon, like their nails, when their intelligence is threatened.”

Melchoir shook his head, sure that it really wasn’t a thing. Humans could be animal-like and awful to each other, but that form of aggression was not how they did it. Or at least it’s not how he remembers things…

“Raine ran away from you,” Brandon started, “Which, I think means she cares and doesn’t want to kill you.”

“You’re being over dramatic…”

“Am I? She’s practically energy. One zap and you’re dead. Game over…”

Melchoir sighed heavily. He didn’t think about it like that. She was being stupid, going on about a game to make revealing themselves fun instead of just outright telling her brother. What was the point of that? 

“What’s the point of anything?” Brandon countered, and really, Melchoir was getting sick of that specifically. “What’s the point of life? Of being here in Nerranne? Or better still, why isn’t anything else here?” 

Brandon continued with his questions, not letting up for Melchoir to chime in. He did know some things, like the fact that this was a magical place, but even though it was, it didn’t mean that the grounds would remain supple. It didn’t mean that they were safe. Nerranne was alive in a way that Raine was and he couldn’t be sure but Melchoir thought he felt it reaching out to her as the darkness once did… and he panicked.