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It was all gone. Moss, the well, the clearing - gone.
With a cry of anguish, realization descended. Her hasty, unbidden attempt at making amends last night had come back to haunt her.
I wish no human could ever find this clearing again.
Moss hadn’t feltthe plucked string of his own magic until it was too late. Tira had been a distraction, a sensation ofhappiness, more than Moss had experienced in countless years and it left him inattentive. Wishes had also never involved him before - his clearing, his well. The persistent rumors that skittered around the nobility, the ones that painted him a bloodthirsty monster short on patience, heavily advised against getting personal with the well guardian. All that had suited him just fine, until now.
He’d told Tira the truth, that one wish didn’t necessarily cancel out another. Sometimes another wish couldmitigatethe worst of a badly-worded wish, but wishes offered correctly all needed to come true in some fashion. Tira was a human, and she’d crossed the border of the clearing to retrieve her knife, which meant she would never find her way back to him. Accidental, yes, but magic was unforgiving, Moss thought grimly as he stared at his bracers.
He slid down the well defeatedly, damp bricks gliding under his palms and a shockingly unfamiliar burn of tears at the edges of his eyes. He didn’tdespair, for Gods’ sakes, he was a djinn-dragon. He wasn’t some whimpering mortal shrinking from the harshness of the world. He was a creature of magic, made to live on through the ages, infused with power that made kings fall to their knees. A single night with a human woman wasn’t about to undo him, was it?
He stubbornly clenched his fangs and huffed an irritated breath through his nostrils, setting about putting his home to rights to give his hands something to do.
A week later, his home immaculate, Moss’ fragile self-assurance that Tira was a passing fancy had eroded like sand in the running river. He slept fitfully with his head cradled where hers had rested in his nest, her faint musk fading like an uprooted flower in the sun. His loneliness felt like a great river once held back, rushing into his life the moment he’d first caught the little thief tumbling down his well.
A small, impossible thing had wriggled into his mind as he mourned the loss of her. A dangerous thought, one that had him eyeing his pile of still-wished coins and counting carefully. With the four Tira had contributed to his hoard, it could work, if only he could find the bravery to do it. He could go….out there. He could find her, bring her back.
Would she want to come back with him? Would she welcome him, even in the guise of a man? He’d been a little rough with her as a lover, but surely she wouldn’t have waved at him, called back to him, if she didn’t really intend to return, would she?
Moss paced the circle of the well floor, rounding the cistern over and over as he wrestled with doubts and unfamiliar fears. He knew he’d have to leave eventually, or die down here once the coins were used, but now it all seemed soclose.
Would he even remember how to speak, how to comport himself? Tira and her unwanted followers had shown his understanding of the common tongue still worked, but perhaps the culture had changed. He was a damned fool to have stayed hidden away so long - hadn’t he known this day was coming, if only for survival? Now he’d be not only out of his home, but out of his element. He also didn’t even know where to begin looking for Tira. Fear slithered cold through his belly.
Moss left off his anxious circuits and sat heavily on the edge of his nest, turning one of Tira’s wished coins over and over in his talons. Every time he tried to give himself permission to wait, to hold off on venturing beyond his home until hehadto, he realized the day had arrived unbidden. He might not have been out of coins, but he was out of patience, and the ache in his chest to see Tira again wasn’t going away. Despite the transactional nature of their first meeting, he couldn’t stop thinking about the bold little human.
His dragon was also restless. His treasure had been taken, and the need to reclaim it was riding Moss hard. He let out a growl of frustration, clutching Tira’s coin in his palm and grunting as his body responded to his unspoken demand, a brief flash of pain as his tail divided and his cock extruded to hang, vulnerable, between his new legs. He scratched at his cheek with blunt fingernails, frowning at the inefficient gesture. Moss was starting to remember why he disliked walking among the humans - they were so…unimaginatively designed.
He shook the dust and lichen off a fine silk bag and loaded it to the brim with his still-wished coins, magicking some clothes and boots he hoped were appropriate and reasonably in fashion. Securing the bag to his belt, he headed towards the well mouth before he could change his mind again, hauling himself up the last of the rope, freshly threaded through the repaired pulley overhead.
It took him long, uncertain moments at the well edge, his booted soles hanging over the edge, to actually slide down a few inches to the ground. Even when he managed it, his chest felt tight and his hands snapped behind him to brace on the brick, uselessly-blunt nails digging at masonry.
There. There, he’d done it.
It took a few more moments of goading himself to get through the clearing, a few promises made of how he’d express his affection for Tira, what pleasurable delights he’d offer her once they reunited. For her, he could cross the road. For her, he could walk farther than he imagined, until his strange, separated legs felt sore and aching, dust caking nearly every inch of his conjured finery.
And for her, he could corner a drunk in an alley, menacing the confused, addled man with a glinting gold coin like a weapon.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir! I ain’t done no harm to no one, I swears it on me ma’s grave!” The man squinted up at him with one bleary eye, crouched against the side of the town’s most disreputable inn. His vision kept flicking between the unimaginable wealth being thrust at him and the snarl Moss couldn’t seem to keep off his face. The townsfolk gave him, and his oddly-dated clothing, a wide and wary berth, which made his increasingly-frantic questioning difficult.
With a growl, Moss abandoned subtlety and grabbed the man’s shaking hand, slapping the cleansed coin into it. “It’s a nice gold sovereign, isn’t it? Think of all the ale it could buy. It’s yours, all you have to do is wish we were both in front of the last woman to touch it.”
Choosing an extremely inopportune moment to question his good fortune, the man raised his free hand, shaking visibly, and made the sign of warding against evil while trying to shake his head in refusal.
Moss pulled the man’s captive hand in tight to himself, letting his fangs slip out beneath the human glamour. “Do it or I willeatyou, stubborn bastard.”
The drunk paled and stammered his way through what was, more or less, what Moss had just told him to say. Yes, it was technically a small violation of his sacred duty, this bit of physical menace, but he could put up with the tingling itching from his bracers for a while, if there was any magical lashback. It was worth it to find her.
The world tilted and spun in a dizzying way, and when it righted itself, the newly-rich drunk man unceremoniously vomited in the corner of an unfamiliar tavern. The scrape and clunk of wooden chairs sounded as people scurried to put distance between themselves and the pair of strangers that had just manifested in the middle of the floor.
Moss’ heart leapt into his throat as he spied a flash of silky black hair at the bar, the pants and boots unmistakably Tira’s. It plummeted back to earth as he realized she was in the arms of another man, their mouths smashed together as the man pinned her back against the bar.
He’d been a fool.
Moss’ dragon roared in agony to be denied a treasure he’d claimed, the heat and steam of angry fire roiling at the base of his throat. Moss needed to leave before he burnt the tavern down, he needed to go home, to the welcoming coolness and solitude of his well.
Stumbling back a step, he turned and looked wildly for the door. Out, he needed to getoutand not look at the bar, or Tira again. His heart felt like ash, andyou fool you fool you foolrepeated in his head like the song of the mockingbird in his clearing.
His hand gripped the doorframe, ready to hasten his exit at the door when a sound stopped him cold. A distressed, angry noise, high and feminine, thick with a choked sob of fury.
