Hail The Queen (or Suffer the Grave)

[Winters-Feather]

"Right, then," Gumi said with a sigh as she settled herself in a corner. It was a little damp in the cave, but there was no helping it. They couldn't build a fire anyhow, not in this weather. She sat up regally on a rock, as if it were a throne, her hands clasped in her lap. She watched the giant curiously, her eyes wandering towards his wounds. After a while, she rose to her feet and approached him.   
"I am feeling generous tonight, so I shall reward you for your services today," Gumi announced with a smug smile.
"I'll heal all your wounds for you. Would you like that?"

[Lion]

Grave could feel the mud he had been using to stuff his wound already drying and it made him itch and uncomfortable.  He dug a finger into his chest and sniffed and grunted with a deep set frown.  "Heal me?" he asked, seeming like a dumbfounded child.  "If you heal me, then I am to serve you.  And you will be my Mistress."

[Winters-Feather]

Gumi smiled as sweet as honey at the giant's unexpected answer. He was as tall as her when he sat down, her eyes on his level. The awe she assumed he emitted pleased her.
"Done," she responded.
She held her hands out before his chest, where the lance had struck through. His wounds would  heal inside to out, pushing mud out mixed with blood from unscarred skin. Any others he might have bared, were healed similarly.
It was over within moments.
And now you're mine.

It did not pass her attention the strange clamps on his belly, seen through his tattered rags.
"We'll have to get you new clothes," she resolved. It wouldn't do for her servant to be dressed so poorly! "What are those on your skin? Not tattoos."

[Lion]

Grave gave her a confused grunt after she had healed him and suddenly was making decisions on his fashion choices.  "Clothes...do not concern me.  Why does it matter?" he grunted and furrowed his already narrowed brows.  "Garments would not fit.  I wear what I have.  That is enough, no?"

[Winters-Feather]

"Yes, I suppose," she responded with an airy shrug. No need to upset the giant now! That was the longest speech she heard him say yet.
For now.
"But you're with me now, and finding things that fit will no longer be a worry. Ah, but you still haven't answered my question... err. Ah. Formalities."
Gumi smiled. They were a bitch.
"What may I call you?"

[Lion]

"Hmmmm....name," the words came out almost like a purr and Grave peered up at her with his blue-burning eyes.  "Names can come from many things.  Many masters give me names.  My name..."  He grunted and shook his head.  Graaaave  The word reverberated in his mind like an echo in a cave.  It was not his true name, that he knew.  Such a thing was lost many many years ago, ages that could no longer be traced.

"My name...is Grave," he managed to reply, coming to terms that that was the only identity he had truly come to own.

[Winters-Feather]

"Grave," Gumi repeated, letting the word roll off of her tongue.
"I like it," she declared, clasping her hands in her lap. "It's very promising."
She yawned.
"Well, I look forward to getting to know you much better," she said as she made herself comfortable. "But now I shall call it a night. Do what you'd like so long as it's quiet, but we travel in the morning." 

[Lion]

Grave's face relaxed if you could call it that.  He blinked at Gumi and tried to relax as she made herself comfortable on one of the stones.  "Mistress," he said, addressing her as he knew the title she would take on.  "Why did they chase you?  The men in steel and iron?"

[Winters-Feather]

"Hmm?"
Gumi stretched, her lips curling into smile at Grave's question. Her eyes half shut, she  played with a tooth on her belt, faintly glowing purple.
Steel and iron? she thought. How rudamentary.
"Oh. Their master owed me, so I took his magic," she said with an innocent shrug. "Not all of it, just a little. He owed me, but he didn't take too kindly to paying his depts."
She buried her head in  her arms.
"Now let your mistress sleep," she ordered, playing with the words on her lips.

[Lion]

Grave's frown only deepened at the answers she gave him.  Certainly a servant should not be one to press, but he was curious and he couldn't help himself.  "What sort of debt?" he asked further.  "What did he borrow from you that would require stealing his magic?"  It was unusual for Grave's questions to go into depth as it were, but beneath the brutish front was a thoughtful mind, prone to many curiosities.

[Winters-Feather]

Gumi sighed, a little frustrated. She had kindly suggested to Grave- and she rarely suggested- that he let her sleep. Yet, here he was, asking more questions! Without bothering to get up, she turned to face her servent.
He's thoughtful, that one, she thought. That might be a good sign- smart, but loyal, servants made things easier.
"I will tell you because it is important for you to understand our line of business," she said. "He owned me for wasting my time and services. Why, I'm the greatest summoner in this world! Royality hire me to kill, and I do it. For the right price, of course. It's lowly work, but with the coin, I will raise an army and take back my home lands!"
A fire burned in her eyes at those words. She held up the tooth with the newly stolen magic with a proud smirk.
"He dared to insult me by not offering me my dues. So I took the next best useful thing. "
Gumi paused for a moment, hopeful that this would sink in and impress the giant creature.
"Now I shall be going back to bed," she said, haughtily. "Any other question can wait until morning! Good night."

[Lion]

The explanation satisfied him for a time.  Grave nodded to her answer and sudden request for sleep, but little did she know that her answer had only sprang up more questions.  "But why do you need to return to your homeland?" he asked softly.  "What happened?"

But her snoring soon kept the questions at bay and he slumped back against the cave wall.  He supposed there was little more to do than to go to sleep himself.  He closed his eyes and tried to still his ever curious mind, and soon he was breathing softly all on his own.

[Winters-Feather]

Sure enough, Gumi had started to lightly snore. She dreamed of a giant demon at her control crushing her sister. She smiled in her sleep.

Gumi rose with the dawn. She summoned one of her spirits, a raven, to scout the immediate area, but it reported back with news of little trouble.
Good, she thought. She had no doubts there'd be much more of a fuss down the road, but it was time to go job huntin,g and she knew just the place. She stood across from the sleeping Grave, regally posed with her hands solemnly clasped.
"Get up," she ordered in a loud voice. "Morning has come. It is time for us to be on our way, my Grave."

[Lion]

It only just registered in the brief moment that he woke up, that he had been snoring.  And a small puddle of drool pooled on the corner of his lip.  He sucked it up before it could spill out and he wiped his mouth.  The fiery orbs of his eyes blinked and he snorted and grunted in his effort to get up. 

He still hunched a little in the cave and shifted his weight awkwardly.  "Where are we going?" he groaned.

[Winters-Feather]

At Grave's question, Gumi immediately pointed up the notorious mountain paths.
"That a ways," she said airily.
She was almost certain that ways would eventually lead to a series of dragon caves. She had studied maps and talked with many spirits before. Gumi had discovered that some of these dragons had a reputation of hoarding treasure, some possessing magical abilities that even she envied. One in particular, a nasty giant beast of alabaster scales, was rumored to be in hold of a device that enabled one to jump across nations, even worlds... rumors, of course, but the thought of it made Gumi thirst for it.

"Come," Gumi said as she began to keep up a lively pace, not willing to waste a moment on hesitation.
"We've an appointment with a dragon."

[Lion]

Grave murmured a soft confused grunt.  While it was natural in him to ask and he might have done so had he not the feeling that she would show him soon enough, Grave instead kept his mouth shut and crawled out of the cave at her heels, slunking along the way.  Instead he peered through the fiery orbs of his eyes and studied the narrow path they were to walk across.

"Who is this dragon?" Grave asked instead.  "Some dragons have name.  Some even speak.  But I know nothing more.  I haven't met many dragons."

[Winters-Feather]

"Um," Gumi said in a tinkering voice. "I don't know. Some call him the Pearl Dragon, the Keeper of Worlds, or whatever nonsense like that."
She shrugged her thin shoulders as she gracefully walked on the filthy road.
"I've met a couple," she said, wrinkling her nose. "They're mostly big, and grumpy, and possess frightfully thick skulls. Hardly impressive. They smell, too."
Ancient wisdom my arse.
In truth, the queen didn't much like dragons. They, like her, often had competitive spirits and thought that they were the superior one. Of course she had proved them wrong, but they were a tiresome bunch.

[Lion]

"Hmm."  It was his usual response to idle conversation, but Grave found his curiosity growing all the more.  "What does a dragon smell like exactly?  Do they smell like dirt?  Like flowers?  Like dirty flowers?"

[Winters-Feather]

Gumi furrowed her brow.
"Ah- no. Not really," she said, shaking her head. She was growing a little frustrated. Here she was, trying to lead an expedition to talk- or slay- a dragon, and here Grave was, talking about flowers!
"This one's probably going to smell of brimstone and gold.  Filthy creatures, really..."

[Lion]

"Brimstooone," Grave mused, his voice falling low and sniffing the air.  He remembered the scents of fire and smoke and dirt.  These to him were of home - if such a place existed for him.  Did he have a place to call 'Home'?  Something in that concept remained incomprehensible to him and he frowned deeply at his lack of understanding.

"Mistress," he found himself asking.  "What is 'home'?"