Actually, despite living in a quasi-desert state some thousand miles from the nearest ocean, I do like seafood. There’s a great all-you-can-eat sushi place not far from where I live, and while most of the menu is cooked meat of some sort, I occasionally have something local sashimi-style. I just had a million trepidations, if you could have a plural of them, about eating with the Dragon.  It’s like multiple sinking feelings – that feeling of your heart sinking, and your stomach, too.  Or maybe your pancreas.  Sweetbreads.  Something like that.  You know, the parts of the animal you eat because you have no better options, but if you think about it you shouldn’t because why would you eat the parts that do all the poison processing?  Or in the case of the thymus, major immune system classrooms?  (Well, you know, it’s a place of education.  T-cell college.  You can’t tuna piano, but you can school a fish.  No, wait, that’s not how it goes.)

“This isn’t some kind of test, is it?” I asked. “Some kind of, `I’m going to turn you into a whale and make you eat giant squid,” thing?’ Because, and you can add it to my list of sheer ridiculous things you’re going to reluctantly cater to, I don’t want any more transformations.”

“I was thinking hibachi, actually,” Peredur said, mildly, his arm still around me. “There’s this great little place not too far from yours.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said.  I thought I knew the place, but rarely had the funds to indulge.  Honestly, the ambiance was what was so expensive at such a place. I could buy my own steak and scallops for much less. Of course, I’d have only a vague idea how to cook them…but that was what the internet was for, right?  I’m sure there’s YouTube videos out there, even if searching for the term “flank steak” might need some kind of safe search mode.

Oh internet, you so crazy.

I relaxed momentarily, which was when Peredur used the arm around me to push me into the water. I started to thrash and sputter, and the colors of darkness and sand swirled, a faint sulphurous light, and the sound of rushing air threatened to drown me. After a nauseating moment of cold and lost, I was spitting up salt water in a parking lot between two evergreens.

“What the heck was that?” I asked once I got the taste of salt off my tongue, arms still flailing.

Peredur breathed at me.

Aslan’s breath was a symbol, some scholars say, of the powers of divine resurrection.    His breath could heal those who have been petrified, boost the morale of the faithless, and cause sleep, not to mention transport others to his Eden.  Peredur’s breath was not so sweet.  It was woodsmoke and searing flesh, maybe a hint of sour apple cider, a flash of vinegar, a leftover tang of spoiled milk,a brush of burnt caramel.  It wrapped me up in a cocoon of darkness, taking sight and breath away from me.

After a moment I was warm, warm and dry.  I could almost breathe again.  “If you could have done that the whole time,” I began, after I finished coughing…

Peredur said nothing.  In the time it had taken for him to work his spells (and it frightened me, I admit, how fast and easy it was for him to move from place-to-place), he had changed his clothes, and his look.  Instead of something suggesting Sergeant Pepper’s red coat, he wore a long black jacket,  had his hair black and pulled back, with but a strange golden streak, and his eyes seemed muted somehow, more a glossy brown than the flames of before.  This walking fashion show was in stark contrast with the Spriggan Sibs, Rayya always wearing diaphanous and unusual white, and Nen and his eclectic “what kinds of stuff can I find on the street?” combinations.

“Fine, fine, Dragons work in mysterious ways.” I waved my hand in his general direction.  “You get a pass because I’m sure if the reasoning behind it wasn’t sensible there’s absolutely nothing I could do about it anyway.  You’re buying, and I’m getting the fried green ice cream.”

I strode forward, managed to not twist my ankle on the rocks or the step onto the asphalt, and then found the door.  I headed towards it and the light inside.

The hostess sat us fairly quickly, but she had an odd look on her face. I realized after a moment that she had asked if we were on a date, and I’d nodded distractedly.  I realized that correcting her would have been far more embarrassing and complicated so just decided to suck it up.  Erm, so to speak.

Peredur scooted his chair closer to me. “Ah, Closer, I had not known you were ready to take our relationship to a physical level.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not,” I said.

“What, am I not attractive enough?” he almost pouted.

“If I’m not going to tap Tinkerbell, you can be sure I’m not looking at your scaly tail.”  I was proud of that phrasing.

Our table was pretty empty, not surprising given the late night, and our chef grinned at us as he put his hat on, covering up his blue and purple ‘hawk.  He wasn’t very tall, but he definitely had charisma. I found myself looking at the curve of his chin in a way that made me a little uncomfortable.

“What’s the occasion?” he asked, chopping vegetables almost casually.  He sliced carrots and onions as if he had a targeting system in his brain, but at the same time, the laser precision was just a suave, hardly worth mentioning side effect of all that skill.  Each individually julienn’d carrot was perfectly like the next, a mass production piece that would have been terrifying if it’d been fast food, but was somehow artful at this price range. Well, that and it was made of real carrots that had been functioning as real root vegetable carrots, not like potatoes turned into particle board turned into those vacuum-pressed pieces of sameness you sometimes find in tubes in the grocery store.  And the onions! The onions failed to drive us all into tears of madness, unless they were tears of amazement at the, um, lack of tears.

I admit it, I was tired enough that even my metaphors were rolling over and mumbling something about pressing the snooze button.

“Um,” I said.  “Well, if you must know,” I tried to make, “We just sealed a horrific creature back into its otherworldly tomb,” sound cool or reasonable in my head, but it wasn’t working.

“Our anniversary,” Peredur said, putting his hand on mine.

I glared at him, trying to give my best, “take it off or I’ll remove it,” look, but he gave me a glance with some heat in it. Kind of literally, the flash of his eyes brought a hint of fire to them, as if he was daring me.

Great, a Dragon with sex on the brain.  Teach me not to listen.  “Yes, our work anniversary,” I said, trying to put emphasis on the word ‘work,’ although I got a little reference to assassination that way.  Well, if I were to try to put a hit on Peredur, I’d…

I’d ask Nen.

Huh.

Maybe I was making a false connection, like deciding a bunch of blood splatters made some kind of random occult pattern.  Like you do.

“You’re adorable,” the chef said, laughing. “Hey, it’s none of my business, if you want to go all ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’  I can see that you’re uncomfortable and your friend’s having you on.  You’ll enjoy the food more if you’re in a good mood.  I don’t see any mamihlapinatapai between you.  Let’s make small talk. What kind of work do you do?”

“I sell couch insurance,” I said.

“I loved that movie,” the chef said, catching the reference. “But you don’t look like a hired killer. I mean, I’ve met the type.  Him,” he pointed at Peredur, “I could believe anything of, but you, no, you’re a,” he paused, “dentist.”

“If I’m around him I’m too much of a masochist for that,” I played the game. “Even if I am bad at raising plants.”

“Bloody menaces, aren’t they?”  The vegetables went flipping into the air.

“He’s a wizard,” Peredur said, sighing. I didn’t miss the little bits of smoke that came out of his nostrils as he did.

“My father used that term for really good hackers,” the chef said.  “Your hands aren’t right for a musician, and definitely not a gynecologist.”

I think I blushed, maybe a little, and Peredur allowed me to pull my hand back.  “Definitely,” I muttered.

“Maybe a sales associate,” the chef decided.  “You look like you might go postal if someone pulled a single balloon out of a fifteen balloon package.”

“Oh, man.  Just as long as I don’t sell soap.”  I nodded.  I’ve worked sales.  I’d almost rather do anything in the first two seasons of Dirty Jobs than do it again, but it was something you could mention in public.  Unlike, you know, exorcisms.

Well, depending on the audience, maybe.

Peredur made a noise, something between a growl and a snicker.  A grolicker?  That was a terrible portmanteau, and I wasn’t going to use it in his hearing, especially in the mischievous mood he seemed to be indulging.

“You like the onion volcano?” the young man asked.  He laughed, then.  “Of course you do.  Everyone loves the onion volcano.”  He accomplished the onion volcano trick, and then started actually making our meals.

Meals I hadn’t remembered ordering.  I glared at Peredur, but the Dragon was looking away.  We were the only people left that I could see in the restaurant, except for our chef, some bussing types, the evil hostess whose maniacal manipulations got me into this trap (okay, even my tortured and tired metaphor maker was thinking that was a stretch) and a young lady who was teasing the fish near the entrance.  Honestly, I suspected the fish were in some kind of pisces-purgatory, watching their kind being devoured through the glass and never knowing if they were next.  I could almost hear their little fishy screams, except that fish more make glub noises when they’re in cartoons.  Which doesn’t make any sense, really.  Why would fish glub?  They’re used to the water.

I swore at Peredur.  He looked up, surprised.

“Why are you doing it?” I asked.

“Doing what?” he looked as if I were accusing him of something he had no intention of my finding out he was doing.  I’m sure there was a word for that, because “guilty” just didn’t cover it.

“Collapsing time on me. Beguilement.  Glamour,” I spat the word out.

It was a dirty word, and he scowled.  I saw hints of teeth and flashes of red in his eyes.  Those flashes did not improve the wording – such things could only be illusion, and I got the feeling illusion was kind of a cheap trick in the Beyonder world.  Something done for survival, but not associated with panache.

He didn’t answer me, and I went to eating my dinner.  Steak.  And scallops.  The chef leaned back for a moment, and then nodded at me.  “You kind of had that vibe,” he said.

“Huh?” I grunted intelligibly, or as intelligibly as I could while forcing protein into my mouth less like eating was going out of style, but more like my food was going to be taken away as soon as the hovering waitress suspected I was going to put my fork somewhere near the plate.  Which was an entirely different kind of wrapping your arm around your horde and snarling at the sneaking, thieving hobbitses.

Erm.

“I guess you are one of us,” he said, gesturing a little towards Peredur and emphasizing the “are.”

“What, um, gay?” I asked.

He gave me a dirty look.  “Dude, you’re a piece of work.  What you want to do with your sex life is your own business.  I was saying that he,” another gesture towards Peredur, “was serious.  I meant a wizard.”

Oh.