Chapter Text
The job sounded straightforward; keep the pretty little herbwitch safe and help her rescue a prince from a dragon. Obi kicks himself every time he remembers thinking the first half sounded like the easy part.
Obi swears Shirayuki takes a year off his life every time she walks into trouble. Two months of working for her, and he suspects he's probably down to a human lifespan by now. He’s been doing this for a long time, and no master has ever given him a fraction of this amount of trouble. He’s a professional, he can handle it, but it’s a novelty. Keeps him on his toes.
Her quest itself seems like nothing out of the ordinary. Rescue a prince, marry him, rule the kingdom and live happily ever after. Just don't forget to pay the sidekick, he thinks. She's paying him good wages already, as befits the most unique and flexible bodyguard she could possibly have hired, but surely there will be some bonuses owed upon successful completion of objectives.
Nice bonuses, he tells himself as he's dragging her out of the fox spirit's lair. She complains she was just trying to be helpful. She is going to help herself right into somebody’s dinner pot if she isn't more careful. But she did use her herbs and magic to knock the spirit out at least, leaving nothing for Obi to do but to lead the way out of the warren. He’s indistinguishable in this form from the spirit’s actual fox neighbors, so with some luck nobody will even notice them leaving.
The spirits don’t notice. The hunter does, though, and they both end up halfway up a tree surrounded by dogs. “Mistletoe!” Miss chirps, squirming along her branch for a sample, and between that and the mushrooms she picked in the fox’s lair she’s considering it a day well spent. Obi just wants a minute to catch his breath. It’s not like he cares what happens to her, above and beyond his professional pride. Right.
He doesn't even have time to think about bonuses as he's swimming as fast as he can, deeper than he's ever been before. She said her breathing charm was only good for about an hour, and he doubts the school of mermaids are going to care.
But he's underestimated her again. She meets him on her way up, charm refreshed, arms wrapped around a cornucopia of seaweed varieties, and surrounded by chattering mermaids. She made friends.
“Obi, I'm so glad you're here!” She shoves the basket into his arms. “I promised them fruit in payment for the seaweed, so we're going to have to go find them some. Mssscl here really loves cherries.” The blue-haired, yellow-finned mermaid to her right giggles. She's mangled the sibilant and the click in the name. They should be tearing her apart, not laughing at her. Not that he's complaining, but this must be some different kind of mermaids than he's used to.
The mermaids don’t think he’s all that different. While he's been attending to Shirayuki, two of the others have been investigating him thoroughly. He could ignore the wandering hands on his back and the scales of his tail, but they're starting to get very insistent at his lower fins in a way that's making him nervous. He's really not interested in having anything to do with anyone’s eggs, particularly right in front of his employer, so when his two admirers back away to squabble, he grabs Shirayuki’s hand and heads for the surface as fast as his tail can take them.
“We'll be back soon, I promise!” She shouts back, and bubbles stream away from his sigh. It takes them a week to find enough cherries. It's a good thing they're in season, and she only has to sing to a few trees. They add a watermelon to the collection, on principle, and some apricots. Obi insists the mermaids come to the surface to get their payment themselves.
They make three days of actual progress this time before Shirayuki gets diverted again. This time it's a baby wind spirit, the tiniest djinni Obi’s ever seen. Shirayuki coos to it, reassuring. “Have you lost your way, little one?”
Obi hears nothing but the hissing of sand grains in the wind, but the story is clear to Shirayuki. The dust devil runs up her arm, settling on her shoulder to lash her red tresses. Apparently they're taking it home now.
Little humid-evening-breeze-dampening-the-rocks-on-the-north-side-of-the-mountain has a terrible sense of direction. So does Shirayuki. Obi’s keeping them from going in circles, but there's no telling which way is the right way anymore.
A roaring in the distance comes closer, and Obi doesn't know whether to hope or fear that they've found what they're looking for. Sand starts to patter against the walls of the canyon as it approaches and the intensity of the little squall on Shirayuki’s shoulder increases. It recognizes its mother.
The wind continues to rise, and Shirayuki totters back a step. Obi thinks heavy, with anchors, and she steadies herself against his side then winds her hand in his mane. It'll take a lot more wind to unbalance a horse, but it doesn’t make the wind any more pleasant. His tail twitches with annoyance.
Of course Shirayuki turns down the favor the mama djinni offers, just waves goodbye, finger-combs out her tangled hair, and looks to Obi with a bright-eyed, expectant look. Her skin is pink from the sand, her eyes watery, and he shouldn’t find her as fascinating as he does. She’s the one who keeps leading them all over, but she’s got faith he’ll find the right road. Yet again. In disgust, he takes to the skies as a hawk, trying to figure out how far off course they’ve drifted this time. Her prince is still waiting. But it only takes a short flight to place them, and they’re no more than a day from their destination. Somehow, in spite of everything, they've been heading in the right direction all along.
He’s never really gotten the hang of landing. Shirayuki ignores his stumble, full of questions. “What happens to your clothes when you shift? How do you take them with you?” This is what happens when he gives her too much time to think.
“Please, miss, I am a professional. Although if you’re asking, I could go without.” He winks, and she makes a face. She really doesn’t like it when he evades questions. But he doesn't like questions in general, unless they're leading to a job or a proposition. She's already given him the first and seems to show no interest in the second. That irritates him a bit, if he's to be honest. He's a rarity, a curiosity. Also good-looking in any form, he has it on good authority. The mermaids were very interested. Who wouldn't want him?
Apparently, Shirayuki. “Miss, do you mind if we stop early tonight? Best to face a dragon well rested, I always say.”
That makes her smile. “Did you see a good spot?”
He thinks back on the world laid out like a map beneath him, then points ahead to where they can find water and shelter for the night.
As always, he concocts an excuse to watch while she starts the fire. He's served great wizards before who spoke words of power and summoned elemental fire from beyond the void. He's known summoners who bribed spirits of flame from other dimensions to cook their breakfasts. But Shirayuki does none of these things. She speaks to the wood, asks it kindly, and it burns for her. He's starting to think he knows how it feels.
The local rabbits are fat and slow, and with no more exotic form than that of a dog, he’s dropped two at her feet in short order. Forgetting herself, she ruffles his fur, and he knows he shouldn’t be so pleased but he leans against her side for just a second like a real dog would. Being that close shouldn’t feel so good either. He covers up the moment of weakness by whisking her in the face with his tail as he frisks away, resuming human form already giggling. She gapes back at him, wrinkles her nose, then goes back to cleaning rabbits.
He wakes just as she’s pulling meat off the fire, droning a little song under her breath. He can’t make out words, and she cuts off abruptly when she sees him looking. It must not have been a spell, then. No practitioner would stop in the middle of one like that. “Wings really take it out of you, don’t they?”
He just nods as she hands him half a rabbit wrapped in a leaf. “Do I eat the leaf?”
“I wouldn’t. I don’t know if you want to or not.” She stops talking, but he can almost hear her thinking. She’s not done. “What do you look like when you think of yourself?”
Obi grunts through a mouth full of food. “Whatever I look like at the time.” He always knows what he looks like.
She still seems confused. “So this isn’t the real you?”
“No more than any other form. They’re all me.”
“Hm.” She has more questions, he knows it, but she closes her mouth on them for the time being. That suits him just fine, as he holds out his leaf for the other half of his rabbit. She’ll ask him what she really wants to know sometime, she’s too curious not to.
He sleeps as a dog that night, counting on hearing and smell to wake him if there’s danger, but even those senses don’t alert him when Shirayuki snuggles close in the night, and he wakes with her curled around him, fingers buried in his fur. He escapes and climbs a tree, lizard form mitigating his incipient panic. It’s hard to get very emotional as a reptile, and he needs all the help he can get right now.
She wakes at last, with stretches and little nasal groans and finally her emerald eyes open. Barely a second later, he sees the moment she can’t find him and looses his claws from the bark. He’s human before he reaches the ground. “Are you ready to go rescue your prince, miss?”
She has some cooking to do first, a potion that makes his human nose itch badly enough that he rethinks his plan for the day. Anything with a better sense of smell is going to be intolerable. “Are we going to scare the dragon off with the stench, then?”
Her nose wrinkles again with annoyance. If she doesn’t want him to tease her, she really should stop being so cute when he does. “Hang on, not done.” She closes her eyes, still stirring, and something unseen crackles in the air around her. Her eyes open a slit as she stops stirring and lays a hand across the top of the bowl, then suddenly the smell just reverses, unmaking itself until it might as well have never existed.
When the crackling power dies off, Shirayuki sags a bit. Obi means to draw closer to her, support her or something, but she sees him twitch and holds up a hand. “It burns for a moment. I’m okay.” Her breath puffs out in a sigh. “That’s one down. Now for the easier one.”
The second potion appears to be more herbalism than anything else, a tiny incantation and a snap of magic at the end the only witchery involved. Shirayuki pours that one into a flask and tucks it away. The first one she approaches Obi with. “We need to paint this over all our exposed skin, and the dragon should ignore us entirely.
“But my skin-”
“Changes, I know. No more shifting unless you have to. Unless you want to come with me in some other form? I’d personally rather be able to talk with you.”
Obi despairs of ever understanding what is going on in Shirayuki’s head. She hires a capable and very expensive bodyguard with one signature skill, then asks him not to use it. If he wasn’t along to fight a dragon, what was he there for? But now she’s smearing her oily concoction onto his face, scrubbing her fingers along the underside of his chin and down his neck, so he dips his fingers in the bowl and starts doing the same to her. He’s dismayed at how much gets into her hair as he’s trying to cover her neck. He’s usually more dextrous than this, but she’s moved down to his arms and he really should tell her he can get it himself but her hands feel so good.
In the end, he doesn’t get to do any of his own skin. Shirayuki doesn’t do any of hers either. He doesn’t understand, but there’s a dragon to deal with. It’s a small one at least, snoozing against the wall of the tower, a glistening coil of green and gold. It’d probably only be half the height of the tower standing up, and it only has two wings. It might not even have its fire yet. He feels better about sneaking past. It’s only a baby.
Shirayuki leads the way, focused on the door like an arrow, not a sign of fear in her. The dragon whuffles as they approach the door, one eye open a slit, then settles back to sleep. Shirayuki reaches the door, and of course it’s locked.
She has no tricks for locks, they’ve determined this a few times over already. Obi pushes forward to pick it - usually he’d slip in as a lizard or mouse and just unlock it from the inside, but she wants him to do things the hard way. She stops him, holding up a hand, then leans against the door. Eyes closed, she whispers to it, the boards shivering under her touch, then all at once the door falls apart. Boards clatter to the floor, pegs and wedges scattering, and Shirayuki tumbles through the space with a muffled squeak. A growl answers, the noise being more than the dragon can ignore, and Obi turns to face the creature. This is what he is here for, whether she likes it or not.
Shirayuki never asked him how he would deal with a dragon. He’d assumed she was leaving it to his discretion, not that she was planning to do it without needing him. So she has no idea what he’s about to do. It may not have occurred to her that a dragon is just another animal.
“Go on,” he urges her, then stretches. Her eyes go wide as he fills the clearing, twice the size of the other, gold and black scales and six wings flaring. His claws scar the path as he growls, and the baby green drops to the ground, belly-down like a snake, wings limp and vulnerable in the dust. Smart little thing.
One thundering step toward the tower, inserting himself between the baby and the wall, gets the point across: the tower is his now. A minute of patience, and the little green dragon is winging away. It may get brave and come back for a fight later, but they’ll be long gone. It’s not like he actually wants a tower in the middle of nowhere.
Shirayuki hasn’t gone to save her prince. She’s still at the door watching him as he drops back into human and joins her. He knows the look. She has a million questions, but she’s also impressed. It’s a nice feeling, impressing her.
Obi breathes in to speak, to break her watchful silence, and coughs. “Ugh, I’d forgotten that. Everything tastes burnt for a day afterward.” She’s still staring at him. All these weeks of traveling together and this is what finally gets her attention. “Come on, let’s go rescue your prince before his guardian gets his courage back.” He finds the ascending stairs, because of course the enchanted prince is never in a basement, then flows upward as a cat. Four legs may be more to keep track of, but he doesn’t want her to see him wobbling on two. He doesn’t much want to fall down the stairs, either. Wings again, even when he doesn’t fly.
There’s a single room at the top of the stairs, containing a canopied bed and one enchanted sleeping prince. Obi’s never asked Shirayuki how he got this way. He’s human again, leaning casually on the wall, when Shirayuki arrives, puffing. She acknowledges the sleeping prince, then eyes Obi. He feels like he’s not hiding his fatigue as well as he’d like.
But she has work to do now. Her eyes go sweeping across the room again, focusing on something he can’t see above the prince’s bed, then with a nod, she sits on the floor and goes rummaging through her pack. She binds herbs together, whispers them into flame, then blows them out into smoke. It fills the room in wisps and curls, stopping at the windows and curling back on itself. The room grows dim as it fills, and Obi slides down to sit on the floor as his head grows light with the smell. The cloud grows thickest above the bed, swirling lazily but drawing ever tighter, Shirayuki humming now and directing it with a hand. Her fist clenches, the core of the cloud roils, and then it is as through all the windows open at once. A light high breeze is all it takes to clear the haze, and the prince opens his eyes.
The prince is tall and fair, graceful even as he rolls to an elbow and assesses the two of them. He dismisses Obi with a look, asking Shirayuki, “How long this time?”
“Three months, Your Highness,” Shirayuki answers, nonplussed. She tosses him the flask containing the second potion and he drinks it off. Obi raises his eyebrow at the level of trust he’s showing. Surely now she’ll get her reward, his gratitude and her elevation. She’ll be a lovely princess, although he thinks a rather bored one. Courtiers and nobles are generally not as welcoming of questions as he is.
But the prince smiles as he wipes his mouth, a cold smile promising war, not beneficence. “I’ll have my work cut out for me. You can make it back safely?”
Shirayuki looks at Obi then, and her smile is proud. “Yes, that won’t be a problem.”
“Good,” the prince concludes, pulling himself to a seat. He closes his eyes, folds his hands, and disappears.
Shirayuki sighs and sags a moment. Obi stays glued to the wall with no idea what is going on. “Her Highness warned me this might happen.” One more deep breath, and then when she speaks again her voice is far more cheerful. “At least we don’t have to walk back with him! We’ll have much more fun by ourselves.”
He can’t imagine what she means. He’s not caught up at all. “You rescued the prince with smoke.”
“That was mathematically calculated smoke. Very precise.” Her mouth is drawn into a pout, and it just makes her lips fascinating.
“And you're not marrying the prince as a reward?”
The look of horror on her face is a delight. “He's already married! Who did you think sent me?”
“Does the fun you have in mind mean I’m going to have to rescue you again?”
“We can talk about that when you’re not so exhausted.” Yes, she sees through him, he has to wonder just how much, and the next thing he knows she’s holding out a hand. “Come on, let’s go back to where we camped last night. No dragon. I’ll even carry you if you want.”
That sounds spectacular. “Do you mind snakes?”
“You’re not going to shift back in your sleep and crush me, right?”
“Miss, I am a professional.” Even he can hear the fatigue in his voice. Taking her hand in his for a second, he flows upward and drapes himself across her shoulders like a heavy, scaly scarf. She strokes his scales fondly, and he dozes, safe in her arms.