The horse snorted, rearing in fright and emitting a screeching whinny as Morsus skimmed low over the trees, sunlight flashing off two dazzlingly green bodies as he grappled with another green dragon. He snarled, lashing out with a rear leg as the other dragon grabbed him low in the throat. She screeched, deep crimson blood coursing from a gash on her inner rear thigh. Both creatures were rather beat-up, with Morsus being much less so. However, at the moment they seemed evenly matched. Breaking apart, they shot up and away from each other, pausing about four hundred feet up and circling like wolves. Morsus stayed back, pacing himself, casting a calculating eye on his opponent, smaller and thicker than he in build. She was his cousin, Ildra, and about a century older; the two fought constantly over the tiniest of matters, sometimes over nothing save for the sake of the fight.

Ildra grew impatient with the staring match, rearing suddenly and shooting like an arrow at her opponent. Morsus, almost before she acted, reacted, dropping like a stone and then shooting straight up behind her. The smaller dragon whirled in midair, losing her rhythm and tumbling a hundred feet or so before catching herself, but too late. Morsus dropped straight onto her back, flinging his wings out at the last moment to avoid crashing to the ground as he sank his teeth into the back of her neck. Ildra yelped, thrashing in his grip, but he held tight, angling their bodies and driving her to the ground. Just before they hit the treeline, he shoved himself upwards, soaring above his cousin as she crashed into the forest, breaking several trees before tumbling into a clearing. She lay for a moment, crumpled and trembling, and Morsus circled her, resembling nothing so much as a huge emerald vulture. He grinned a monstrous dragon-smile, teeth and claws red-black with blood. The red liquid dripped from several wounds on his own body.

He circled lower. Had she passed out? Damn girl had better not have gone and died; that would totally defeat the point of the exercise.

She moved, though, pulling herself doggedly to her feet. She nearly made it before collapsing like a newborn foal, outline shimmering. A moment later, a tiny raven-haired woman lay in the grass, bleeding.

Morsus dropped down beside her, stumbling slightly as his left rear leg hit the ground. Blood spattered from a nasty gash along the back of the thigh, and he held it curled against him. He cocked his head and looked at his cousin a moment, bedraggled and glaring up at him, before he also phased back into his elven form. Head still cocked and left leg held slightly off the ground, he resembled nothing more than a heron. He limped over to Ildra, crouching beside her with his injured leg stretched out to the side.

"Had enough, yet?" he inquired politely, licking at a cut on his hand. She looked like it. Scratched, gashed, bruised and battered all over, she nonetheless shoved herself painfully into a sitting position, glaring at her cousin. Her large chartreuse eyes gleamed silvery and spiteful.

"Not nearly so," the small girl snapped. She paused. "I call an intermission."

Morsus laughed, poking at her stomach. She yelped, falling back onto her elbows and wincing. "Child, I bet you can't even get up. I won."

This was met with an even deeper glare, then a sigh. Ildra flopped back, pouting at the sky in resignation. "Fine."

Morsus watched her smugly for a moment, running a hand through his hair and automatically reaching back to gather it back up into a ponytail, then turned in the direction of that damned stallion. It had snapped its reins and run off during the fight, and he was going to have to find the silly creature.

"You should've just killed the little bastard," Ildra remarked, seeing his face and guessing his thoughts. "Save a lot of trouble."

Morsus rolled his eyes. "He's not that bad, he's just a tad ornary."

"Like you! Frigging bitchy boy," Ildra quipped, then yelped as Morsus punched her in the arm. "Well, you are!"

He simply smirked slightly, leaning back to sit with his legs splayed out in front of him. "Ah, but it keeps the imbeciles well away!"

"I can drink to that," Ildra muttered.

----------------------

I awoke feeling rather smothered, and wondered why for only a moment before realizing that I was biting the corner of my pillow, and the rest of it was consequently shoved up against my face.

I deliberately detached my teeth from the fabric, hoping I hadn't ripped it. Not that I really used it, much. . . My arm was just as good as any pillow. I tried to just roll over and pretend what had just happened, hadn't, but upon closing my eyes I was met with Ildra's laughing face, eyes crinkled and the scar on her jaw white against the healthy tan, pale silver-green eyes dancing. I opened my eyes, growling slightly to myself. Why was all of this starting to come back to me, now? Why couldn't I just leave myself alone? I frowned at that thought, realizing how odd it sounded.

Sighing, I rolled over again, glaring at the drawer of my bedside table where I kept my dragon orb. I thought I had an inkling of exactly why these memories were coming to me, but I preferred not to think about it. I tried not to think at all, for a moment, but I was wide awake, now. I sat up, swinging my feet onto the floor, propping my elbows on my knees. I stared absently out the window for a moment, watching the clouds drift over the moon. One moon. I felt a slight tug at my heart, and realized that I kind of missed the pinkish glow cast by the red and silver moons in the sky. Something Ildra had once told me when I was young floated through my mind. Keep yourself up high. Closest to the moons, always. If your opponent is above you, you're likely as good as dead. Unless, that is, you're playing them like a lute!

I sighed. Yeah. . . up high. She had ended up dying by that game. . . no. Damnit. This always happened. I always wandered off into a direction I didn't want to go. Muttering curses under my breath, I stood, glancing around for a shirt, not immediately finding one, then realizing I'd fallen asleep in my clothes. Well, then. That worked, too.

I left my room, feeling like some sort of ghost as I moved through the empty house, sleeping occupants safe behind closed doors. I trailed a finger along the wall, heading towards the nearest route outside and wondering in a detached sort of way if half of them would sleep so soundly were Morsus to make himself—myself? whoever that was—known.

"Rawr," I muttered acerbically to myself, pulling open the sliding door in the kitchen just enough for me to slip out, closing it behind me. I strolled slowly out onto the lawn, feeling the cool concrete of the patio, then the cold dampness of the grass on my bare feet. Reaching the center of the backyard, I flopped down on my back, landing with rather a harder thud than I'd anticipated, feeling the air shoved out of me by the impact. I folded my hands behind my head, listening to the nocturnal sounds of the forest threatening to overtake the edge of the yard and listing the constellations and stars I knew to myself.

Betelgeuse. Columbia. Rigel. Archernar. Mira. Taurus. Columba. Orion. Phoenix. . . The exercise quieted my mind somewhat, and by the time I'd finished my list of celestial bodies, I felt slightly drowsy, content to simply lie in the cold grass and listen and watch and. . . just be. I sighed again, absently noting that the moon was a waning half-moon. Solinari had been at that same phase when I'd last seen it. . . when I'd last seen any moon before a timeless year of hell.

I quickly diverted my thoughts, focusing instead on the lyrics of the first song that came to mind.

"Got me on a short leash, tied to your screen door. I used to run with the big dogs, 'til I stretched out on your front porch. Used to be a hound dog, chased a lot of fast cars, now I don't even bark when the kitty cats stroll through the backyard. . . " I sang quietly to myself, and dozed off thinking of Kris.