To Hate A Dragon

Alonah looked around, hand still over her mouth. When at least two minutes seemed to pass, she sneaked a glance at him to found him sound asleep. It was apparent that he had a long two days and rest was the primary thing he needed. Fighting dragons could really wear someone out, she assumed. He also hadn't eaten either. She internally decided that she would take him to breakfast tomorrow, so that he would have as much energy as possible.

All of that planning was causing her eyes to slowly limp until she fell into her deep slumber, snuggling against her pillow. It didn't take long for night to pass into day.

"...onah..."

She made out a far away voice but chose to ignore it.

"Lonah! Alonah, get up!" The voice suddenly clicked in her head. Her mother was calling her. "Honey, I'm off to work! Nadia is at Rachel's! Make sure you remember to put that box in your room in the basement, okay? Lonah? I know you hear me, young lady! Well, I'm off!" Soon after that, she detected the soft closing of the front door and the reverie of her car speeding down the road.

A soft moan escaped her mouth. Half of her body said stay but her mind was telling her to wake up. She was awake but refused to move, eyes still closed.
 
Mako shot up, shocked and disappointed that he had fallen asleep. He looked immediately to Alonah's bed, where he saw a seemingly asleep peach-headed girl. He walked to the bed and began to inspect it for traps or devices, checking under pillows and lifting up blankets.

"Everything seems clear..." He said to himself, still leaning over the bed.
 
Forced to open her eyes due to the fact that her head had been lifted from the pillow and grazed against the headboard, Alonah was officially awake.

"Well good morning to you too, she mumbled, rubbing the tiny bump on her head. A daily dose of over-exaggerating protection from Kimimako Natsuri. Just what I wanted to wake up to. Stretching and yawning from deep within her diaphragm, she twisted her body over and came nose to nose with A pair of bright green eyes. Alonah blinked once and quickly stiffened, all of her muscles contracting.

"Uhh..uhh.."she stuttered, and , realizing she sounding like a babbling fool, she shut her mouth shut. It was better to not say anything at all than to say something she didn't fully think about first.
 
Mako stopped, directly in front of the girl he had been protecting. Despite the time of day, Alonah had a natural glow of beauty. Mako found himself admiring it for a moment.

"Oh right, good morning." Mako said, and then quickly turned away. He continued searching for a moment, and then finally stood up. "I was right, thankfully. The Order didn't attack right after their first. We got lucky this time."

He sat on the edge of the bed, and his stomach began to rumble loudly. He looked down at his stomach and realized he was still shirtless. He turned to Alonah. "I'm going to need some food... And possibly a shirt."
 
"Right. Well that's good. I get to live another day for now."she said.

Alonah nodded, taking the quickest way out of the scenario she could and rushed over to her dresser. Throwing clothes out of her dresser, she searched desperately for a large--ah. With a triumphant grin, she tossed a light blue shirt with the words 'Misunderstood' on it, over her shoulder and towards Mako.

"I'm pretty positive you can fit into that. And after you get dressed, I'll make breakfast. I know you're starving."she said, hands on her hips. For some strange reason, her mood had completely changed in a matter of seconds. Everything felt so rushed and awkward to her now. What was I supposed to...oh right...the box. Her eyes swiveled over to a heavy looking storage bin in the corner of her room and strode over to it. Wrapping her hands around it, she struggled to pick it up. She looked over to Mako who lifted an eyebrow at her. With her focus back on the bin, she heaved it with a grunt and wobbled over to the door.

"I'll...be r-right....back..."she huffed, taking staggering steps towards the door.
 
Mako caught the shirt and put it on hesitantly... It fit fine enough, he wasn't picky when it came to clothing. When he saw Alonah trying to pick up the box, he almost wanted to just watch and see what she would do. His guess was correct, she would be stubborn and try and carry it herself.

"Don't be ridiculous." He walked over and took the box into his arms. It wasn't hard to carry, but still had some weight in it. "Where does it go? And what's in this thing anyways?"
 
"I honestly don't know, but it goes in the basement. I'll take you there."she said and led him to the hallway. She walked and and peeked around her, looking at Mako hold the box expertly in his hands. It was like it was made of cotton to him. She blinked, continuing to walk and look behind at him.

"Wow. You're really stro--"

It all when in slow motion from there. She hadn't been paying attention to where she was going and, with one foot suspended in mid-air, she missed a step downstairs, and went tumbling down.
 
Mako was following behind Alonah patiently, when all of a sudden the hallway was filled with thuds, thumps, and a hard crash at the end. He looked around the box to see that Alonah had fallen... all the way down. He bolted down the stairs and dropped the box, spilling some of its contents. He knelt beside her placed his hand on the back of her neck, gently sitting her up.

"You know, it really won't do any good that I protect you if you're always trying to kill yourself."
 
The fall didn't hurt her as bad as anyone would've imagined. The stairs were covered in carpet, and Alonah was used to falling down them countless of times. So much for being so aware.

She felt a hand on the back of her neck as she hoisted herself up, rubbing her knee tenderly.

"I'm not trying to kill myself. You just happen to be doing a horrible job of protecting me."she replied. From the corner of her eye, she saw the box laying on the edge of the stairway, opened. With a heavy sigh, she made her way back up the stair case. To her surprise, the floor was covered with tiny mannequins of dragons. They were almost like little dragon action figures that you would get from a toy store. She bent over, picked one up and immediately dropped it afterwords. The dragon felt....real. Thought it looked like it were made of plastic, it's texture was actually very scaled and life-like.

To her embarrassment, she found herself staring at the bunch, waiting for them to sprout to life or burst into flames or something, but nothing happened.

"I had...no idea I had these."she said, looking at the crudely written word 'Alonah' written across the box.
 
"A horrible job protecting you! Need I remind you a...about..." His sentence trailed off as Alonah was staring at the little dragons that were scattered across the floor. He hadn't noticed what they were when he dropped the box earlier. He bent over and looked closely at one, and then poked it. There was something eerie about the figurines that he couldn't figure out.

"Um... What are they? Where did they come from?"
 
"Dragons," she replied, "and very weird ones, at that." She sucked up the courage to pick up another from the floor and held it in her hand. It was tan with spikes and two tails.

"Not sure why they're in my box, thought. They look so real and intricate. I wonder what they're doing..." Her sentence never finished. The dragon in her palm suddenly shook slightly and then began to disintegrate into her palm in a clump of sand. Well, it didnt burst into flames like she thought it would, but dissipating into a pile of sand was good enough.

"Woah.." she said, holding out her hand for Mako to see.
 
"That dragon... It looked like..." He thought back to the battle with the chameleons. He took a pinch of the sand from her hand and held it close to his face.

"This is strange. I need to know where this came from... Alonah, where is your father?" It was a question that had been on his mind for a while now, but he only now thought to ask it.
 
Alonah cringed at the question. Her father hadn't come up in many of her converstaions with her friends, and it felt wrong to talk about him to a complete stranger like Mako.

But, once again, Alonah couldn't think straight with him around her anyway.

"My father is gone. Where, i dont know. Theres a picture of him there as a matter of fact."she said, gesturing to the fall right wall of the staircase. A man with long silver hair, tinged with bits of orange was posed in front of the frame like a Gothic sillouhette.

"My mother keeps that there. For memories."
 
Mako cringed a bit when Alonah told him about her father just vanishing. He didn't mean to bring up any painful memories. "It's okay, I never knew either of my parents. I was raised by a few members of The Order." He said it casually, without any emotions. He turned to look at the picture and gave it a long hard gaze. It was as if the picture was drawing him in.

He looks... strangely familiar...


He finally snapped out of it. "Anyways... We should get these cleaned up, whatever they are..."
 
"Right." she replied and picked up a collection of differently colored dragons. "My father was a nice guy, according to my Mom. Very sweet. Very...high class. I could remember some things about him. For his age, his hair remained a grey-ish orange-ish color. My mom found that intriguing. Before they new it, they were both dating. Then, I came."she said, smiling back at the look on her mother's face when her large brown eyes would describe the scene to her. "She said I was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. A baby girl with golden-peach hair and large orange eyes, just like my father."she said, looking over to the picture.

She tossed a red dragon into the bucket, along with a white, orange, blue, black, white, and indigo one. There was even one with a smokey color. The textures still felt strange, but she pushed passed them, hoping none would disintegrate into sand again. When all of the figures were back in the bin, which had a large amount of sand at the bottom, she watched Mako heave it and walk down two flights of stairs and into the dank basement.

"We were a happy family. My father worked with a group of men in some...business or something. I really didn't know much about it, but I'm guessing the pay was good since we have this fantastic house. Everything was going good, until my mother's...accident." she said looking around in the dark room, searching for the light switch. When she found it, she clicked it once and instantly drowned the room in a dim fluorescent light.

"My mother suddenly was confronted with a dilemma. My father demanded to know why I was always walking down a street with her, hand in hand. My mom told him countless of times that she didn't know. That i just wanted to walk. My father got angry and started to choke her. I was 4 at the time. I tried to get him to stop, but he was strong. He said, "Stay back, Alonah! Know your place!" My mother eventually wiggled free and my father left. Years later, she met June, my step-father and had Nadia. At Nadia's birth, my father appeared at the hospital, looking as young as ever. I'll never forget the look in his eyes when he saw me through the glass window. My mom didn't see him there...but I did. I looked back at young Nadia with her curly golden hair and she opened up her eyes for the first time. They were orange...just like mine. I looked back to my father, but he wasn't there anymore."she said.

After she was done, the air in the basement started to become ominous. It had taken a lot out of her to tell Mako about her dad, but she just found herself talking more and more about him, until her story was finished.

"Well, lets get to that breakfast. I have to meet Ri at the park at 12."she said, making her way upstairs.
 
"Wow, that's quite a story." Mako said, feeling the emotion in Alonah's every word. He couldn't understand what drove her father to what seemed like insanity, and he found himself wanting know why very badly. The whole thing didn't make sense, but he remembered that some people are unstable like that.

"I feel obliged to tell my story now. As I said, I never knew my parents. The people who raised me never hid the fact that they weren't my parents, in fact they reminded me quite often. They told me that my parents died fighting for The Order. They were members of The Order themselves, I can remember growing up and going through all the ceremonies and procedures. They had a son, his name was Eldred. We became best friends, practically brothers. We did everything together. We always talked about becoming soldiers of The Order, and as soon as we were old enough we signed up." He paused for a second, unsure of how to explain the next part of his story. He closed his eyes, and his mind was filled with memories he would rather forget.

"We had a falling out when I told him how I was leaving The Order. I'm forever grateful for what that family did for me, but in the end, we're on opposite sides. That's all there is to it." By now, the two had reached the front door.

"So that's pretty much everything. What will we be eating this morning?"
 
"I was actually thinking of cooking."she said, looking away sheepishly. Cooking was rarity for her. The only time anyone found Alonah in a kitchen cooking was when her mom would work a long shift and Nadia was hungry. Other than that, she either made something instant or went out to eat.

"How does bacon, eggs, and french toast sound?"she asked, making her way to the kitchen. It was pretty spacious, with a large table at the far corner of the room next to the double paneled window. Alonah made her way to the refidgerator and selcted the necessary items for the breakfast.

"Don't worry. It'll be done soon."she said, shuffling around to grab bowls, plates, a spatula, and a spoon.
 
"Oh yea, that all sounds wonderful, thanks." He went over and sat down at the table. He was still perplexed by everything; Alonah wandering in the street, the dragon figurines, and her father. It all had to be connected somehow, he was sure of it. There was an obvious conclusion... But Mako didn't want to believe that was the only answer.

"So what are you and Ritesa doing today?"
 
The food was nearly finished when Alonah wiped her brow once, thoroughly exhausted by the entire process. Walking over to the table, she slid the hot plate of golden french toast, scrambled eggs, and well-done bacon over to Mako who was sitting patiently at the table.

"He asked for me to meet him at the park on Wednesday, then I met you on Thursday. I don't know why, but I'm sure he has something important to tell me."she said, sitting beside him. She had decided not to eat because she figured she and Ritesa would go out for lunch.

"He's been acting really strange lately. It's scary..."she said, putting her elbow on the table and putting her head on her hand. "You should go out too. You might need a break away from me anyway." she sighed, pushing her peach hair behind her ear.
 
Mako's eyes lit up at the plate full of food. It had been a while since he had a good meal, so any chance at one was a blessing. He began shoving large portions in at once. The heat of the freshly cooked food didn't bother him. He was eating like, a hungry beast, and after all, he was a dragon.

"Well... As nice... as that might be..." He started in between bites. He swallowed the last bit of food and then wiped his mouth with a napkin that was on the table. "You know I can't take any risks like that. I'm going to have to watch you, and you saying he's been strange lately isn't buying you any privacy. Sorry, but you know I can't be too far away from you."
 
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