http://clampfix.fanworks.net/re-fix/bf11.txt </head><body><pre> Between Friends Part 11 "You're horribly sappy, you know," Lantis informed Eagle. "Mmm," Eagle ageed with a slight nod. "So?" Lantis smiled softly and ruffled the silver-blond hair that crowned Eagle's head. "So are you awake enough to be interested in breakfast yet?" he inquired, changing the subject. "Dead animals," Eagle objected. "Who said you had to try them?" Lantis asked. "I'm not going to force my 'barbaric' tastes onto you, Eagle." Eagle's smile faded as he looked up at Lantis. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean to say that, really I didn't...." "You worry too much," Lantis informed him. "I am neither insulted nor disappointed by such words coming from you, because I know you don't mean them in a bad sense." "You're being talkative," Eagle marvelled. "I'm nervous," Lantis replied flatly. "Are the two of you going to stay like that all day?" Geo asked, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Lantis nearly smiled as Eagle hastily broke away from him. "Apparently not," he informed Geo. "Now, if we can just persuade Eagle to give up his sleeping bag and fully re-join the world of the living...." "I'm moving, I'm moving!!" Eagle exclaimed, scrambling out of the bedroll and snatching up his bag of clothes. He disappeared behind a nearby screen of trees with the muttered words, "I'm not letting Geo try to wake me up again." Lantis looked inquiringly at Geo. Geo grinned. "When we were at summer camp once, none of the counselors could get Eagle to wake up, so I was asked to do it." "You still didn't have to drown me!" Eagle interjected from where he was getting dressed. "I chose to pour cold water over him until he woke up," Geo continued, ignoring Eagle. "It took nearly two gallons. He was drenched by the time he opened his eyes." "Some best friend you are," Eagle muttered, stepping back out, dressed in thick black trousers and turtleneck, with his favorite cream-colored cloak over it. "I wouldn't have drowned _you_...." "I wouldn't have slept until noon," Geo retorted. "Now, if you don't mind, the rest of us would like to eat, so I'm going to start cooking." Eagle stuck his tongue out at Geo's back, and Lantis nearly laughed. The day warmed up after a little while, though it was still cooler than the city ever got. Eagle looked up at the sky, which was clear enough to aproach a rare shade of blue-gray, and sighed. He wondered if his world's sky would ever become again the color it had been long before his birth... a pure blue that was the color of Lantis' sapphire-violet eyes. But in the meantime, Eagle distracted himself from those pensive thoughts by perching high in a tree and looking down on the area around their campsite. Lantis was practicing his swordsmanship in a nearby clearing, as he did every day. He was so obsessive, Eagle sighed to himself. Then there was Zazu, sitting quietly just at the edge of the clearing, back to Lantis. He was almost as still as a stone, carefully not frightening the small creatures of the Autozam forests who had come to investigate him. Eagle smiled as he saw Zazu slowly move, taking out a handful of seeds from his pouch, offering them to the animals that surrounded him. And Geo was busying himself with carefully carving a small piece of wood he had found. Eagle concentrated, looking hard, and smiled as he saw what Geo was carving. It was an eagle, the extinct, ancient bird that Eagle had been named for. It had once dominated the blue skies of Autozam... dying off only when the skies turned a golden brown with pollution. Eagle closed his eyes and slowly drifted into the familiar comfort of dreams, relaxing as he became the beautiful avian creature he was named for, stretching his wings out and letting the winds carry him higher and higher, until he could see everything on the surface of his world, or so it seemed. This was perfect tranquility, hanging motionless so far above his world, seeing it in a balanced ecological system. Then the breeze shifted, darkening, until the world below him turned black through the haze, red cracks of lightning-patterned magma flows opening in Autozam's surface. <No!> Eagle cried, beating his wings furiously against what he saw happening. <No! This can't be!> A soft laugh from behind him, a chuckle from a throaty voice that tugged on his memory. "Come here, Eagle. You trust me, don't you?" Suddenly he was a three-year old child again, too smart for his age, too pretty with his moonlit hair and sandy eyes. He felt fingers running through that hair as brown-green eyes looked into his. "Come on, let's play a game," his babysitter said to him. "We can have cookies as the stakes." Eagle trusted Cadillac whole-heartedly, and blithely agreed, lured by the prospect of sugar. Eagle forced himself to wake up before the dream descended wholly into a nightmare, and stared at the air before him, trying to shake what he already had dreamed off. He had seen the destruction of his world. But that wasn't prescience, was it? That was just a bad dream, brought about by sleeping in an unfamiliar position on the hard branch of the tree. He took a deep breath and shook his head, clearing it of the cobwebs, and dropped to the ground, walking slowly over to Zazu. He wanted to meet Zazu's cute new animal friends. Lantis paused in his practice, frowning. He could feel Eagle walking over to Zazu behind him, and resumed his routine, starting three moves back so that Eagle would think he was just dissatisfied with a move, if he chanced to notice. There were layers and layers of concealment, and Lantis was far better at hiding his intentions than Eagle was. Something was disturbing his... boyfriend. <Boyfriend,> Lantis reinforced firmly in his mind. <You said yes, you stay with it. You stay with him.> Zagato, before he had fallen in love with the Princess, would have had a field day teasing Lantis about his new relationship, and would have especially harrassed Lantis about his natural inability to think about having a boyfriend as well as being one. For that reason alone, Lantis doubled his determination to accept his own acceptance. And his *boyfriend* was having nightmares recently, something that he had never had before for so long as Lantis had known him. ********* Kurama: More fiction! Author: Happy, I take it? Kurama: Yeah. Now if only it was more K1/2.... Author: Gimme a little while. I'm working on it. Kurama: Really?! Author: Yes. That, CV, and CCD:AP. Kurama: In reverse order. Author: Perhaps. But CCD:AP part one is pretty much done, and CV can wait. I promise that K1/2 is next. Kurama: And maybe more YYH Christmas? Author: Okay. I'll hack some more out on X'mas as well. School doesn't start for two weeks, after all. Kurama: YES!!! Author: <sigh> Youkos.... </pre><p><a href="./">Back</a></p><p><a href=http://www.dreamhost.com/donate.cgi?id=216><img border=0 alt="Donate towards our web hosting bill!" src=https://secure.newdream.net/donate1.gif></a></p></body></html>