Love as a Form of Binding Ch. 04

She stopped and smiled at him. "I am so happy that you found me. You are a good friend for me."

As she dried his hands for him, she found him looking at her. "What are you going to do now, Maezou? I'd like for you to stay, at least until you figure out what's best for you." He looked down, "I think I'd also like for us to be whatever you mean when you say a couple. If that's possible at all, that's what I'd want."

She wasn't at all surprised now to feel how he desired this for them. She'd been feeling the same things in herself. She kissed him softly, "You say things that make me happy. Just your voice does that, but your words can make me weak." She put her arms around his waist, and he felt her horn against his collarbone, "I'll stay with you, as you said. There is no other place that I would want to be, and anyway, there is no place for me to go, so I am your thankful guest. I think you might have gotten a sniff of me, but I hope not. Your words are making my heart flutter, Toby. Let's go to sleep for now. We have time for my slow thinking, I guess."

She felt something from him and pulled his head down a little. She needed to whisper to him. For some reason, her spoken words wouldn't do for this. Only soft whispers for Toby on this subject, she realized, since it was such a lost hope in him that she'd felt. "I know what you've always wanted to do during a stormy night – and it's a stormy night. I want to experience it with you. Come on, let's go and lie together."

They snuggled close in the darkness, listening to the wind and the snow as it skittered across the windowpane. Toby was happy to finally have this one thing for himself, though he was afraid that it wouldn't last very long. He had only just met her and she'd rocked his world. He knew that it wasn't what she was or how she looked; though he thought she was incredibly beautiful. It was her – just her. He hoped that she sorted out what she needed to do for herself, but he really wanted for her to find a little room for him in whatever she decided. It was beyond his ability to hope for, but if he was given half a chance at her heart, he knew he was prepared to do anything for her to make her happy and safe – though how one goes about caring for a demon was frankly beyond him at the moment.

Toby held her to him being careful not to lower his chin right away if he wanted to look at her. He'd figured out that, though the tips of all of them were pointy, the small middle horn was actually pretty sharp. As they held one another, they both pulled away often to look and smile, trading light kisses. Neither of them could believe the way that they felt. He slid his fingers lightly over the patch of scales on her shoulder.

"Maezou?"

"Yes?"

"Can I ask you a favour?"

"Of course, Toby."

"I'm hoping that you can see a way that we can make love but .... There's something that I'd really like to do sometime. These little scales that you have in places on your body, I would love to have the honor of counting them and kissing every one of them."

He felt her warm breath at his jaw as she chuckled once, "Do you know, those are among the things that most horrify your kind about us? Some of us are completely covered in them, but I only have them here and there. They repulse humans ... " she leaned back to look at him," and my friend Toby wants to kiss them." She softly licked along the line of his lips for a moment, "I could never refuse you something as nice as that. But there still must be several hundred, Toby. You might lose your count."

He cupped her bottom, and his thumb grazed the spot where her tail joined her body. It made her shiver. He noticed it and didn't do it again, though he filed it away for possible future use.

"I'm uh, I'm kind of counting on losing my count, Maezou. At least the first dozen times or so."

She laughed softly, and nuzzled into his neck. He took it as an indication that she wanted the edge of her ear licked again softly, which of course is what it was.

Maezou struggled with a lot of issues in the dark. She heard the shift in his breathing and then waited a little before pulling back to look at him as he slept.

What a wonderful man, she thought as she stroked his ear. A part of her was telling herself not to get involved with him, but there was another part that had a vote as well. And this part was screaming louder and louder, asking why not, and demanding to be heard. She was free now. Whoever had taken over that hell had not missed her, and likely never would since her soul was not where the others were. She could do as she liked now – whatever that was.

She had been in servitude for over eight thousand years of the time on this world, never having the want or the need to feel what she felt now. She decided that she wanted Toby's love, and she wanted to give him hers – just as soon as she could figure out a way to do it for him that offered her some assurance that it wouldn't kill him.

But there was another thing rising up. She knew it was there, and had known that it would eventually force itself to the top. It was her nature, and unless it had a reason to be calm, it would drive her to do random, chaotic things. She'd never given a damn before - her last master had allowed her this, but now she knew that if it came out, innocent lives would be crushed. That meant something to her now. She might not be from here, she thought, but as far as she was concerned, she was done with the business of being a servant in the hells, and done with not caring about these people. If she could have a love with Toby, then she'd have to learn to get along with the others in his world. The problem was that without orders, she was capable of pretty much anything on a whim, and she knew it. She pushed the eventuality away and turned her thoughts to Toby again. There was more to learn and she had all of the ways to seek out what she wanted.

She was a huntress. That occupation requires an intimate and complete knowledge of the workings of her quarry. In the hierarchy of the higher demons, a soul hunter is akin to, and possesses all of the powers and skills of the soul reavers in addition to the ability to find and stalk her prey. She knew that she was considered accomplished. It wasn't a point of pride to her; it was just the obvious, since she was always given one hunt after another until now. Maezou was certain that she could learn what she wanted without the filters of Toby's active mind, and better, she knew that she could do it all without hurting him in the slightest.

She sought out his soul and questioned it gently as he slept. It was alone and lonely, that much she knew. She queried why, and it answered that it didn't know, that he'd always been alone. He'd never felt that he was the least bit attractive to the opposite sex, and had taken his few failed attempts to be proof of it. She softly told it that he was wrong. He was attractive, and more than that, he was kind.

It didn't accept the information, telling her that it had experienced things to indicate the opposite. She felt images come to her from his sad point of view of women who measured a man by the vehicle that he drove, the way that he dressed in the office, and the job that he had as indicators of how he could provide for them - even though many of them earned more money than he did. She didn't know what an office was and it told her that he didn't work in one. From the images, she got the sense that the love of a female here was often tied to one unspoken question which they all sought the answer to – 'What's in it for me?'

Toby didn't know it, and Maezou certainly couldn't have, but it had only been this way to the ones that Toby had been involved with. It was all they knew. They wanted love and sought for it. But it had to measure favorably in the balance of that one question. His soul felt powerless in the face of this. It had been measured a few times, it told her, and always it had been found to be wanting. She asked it what hopes that it had for itself, and it answered none really, though it had some small hope that his new friend might love him. It had no expectations though. It only hoped that if there was nothing for him as it expected, that he could have the friendship. Then his soul retreated from her in fear of telling too much, and would answer nothing more.

She kissed him very softly, wondering at the odds of landing almost in his arms as she had. As he'd explained the way it had happened, she could see that they were impossibly long. A split second either way, and he'd never have seen her.

That had to mean something, she thought to herself. It just had to.

She'd never cared what anybody looked like before. She'd spent enough time on this world to see all the possibilities that could arise out of the human gene pool. She loved this one, though. She liked everything about him. And he'd made it plain enough to her that he wanted so much to be near to her. It had been her business to tear humans apart if necessary to get their souls from them to take back. She'd often seen them void themselves at the realization of what she was there to do.

And he'd said that she was the most beautiful person he'd ever seen.

She smiled at the absurdity of it, a mortal man falling in love with a demon like her. It made her warm inside to think of how he had cared for her – even after he'd seen enough to know that she wasn't his own kind. He'd still cared for her, and was falling in love with her. She took her time, but slowly turned over and thought some more. She remembered the words of an ancient text.

Her eyes welled up with tears as she spoke in the softest whisper that she could hear.

"I was spawned to serve. I have committed no act to condemn me to this. I have served for so long. I have always done as I was commanded. I have never failed in a single task, and I have never stopped. I have been hurt and I have been tormented for nothing that I did or any failing of mine. Always I served, without rest, without complaint. I am unbound, but I know it cannot last. I have never asked or demanded one thing for myself in all of my time. If there is anything for me other than more of what I have done, then I ask this one thing; I want this one. I want to give myself to him, and I want him for my own."

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the glow of another pair of eyes in the darkness.

"Daughter, your whispers ring loud. You have just escaped a pit and the new ruler knows nothing of the dead one's best hunter yet. If you are heard by him too soon, none of what you want for yourself will come to pass. You are wrong in some things of the past, but not perhaps in what I hear in your voice. Have a care what you wish for, my girl."

Maezou smiled as she saw her lovely mother near her, holding her hand palm down to keep Toby asleep. The storm demon stepped closer and Maezou felt the careful tread of her cloven feet through the floor and the bed as she tried for a good look at the man sleeping next to her daughter. She tilted her horned head, "Are you certain? Is he what you want for yourself after so short a time with him?"

Maezou nodded, "The first thing I have ever wanted for myself. I want him. Him more than anything, Mother, but I do not think it can be between us. I am not his kind."

The face of the storm demon softened. "I see that if you have feeling in your heart, you are just as I was in knowing the one you want. It happens, though seldom. Only a very few know, but you are proof of it. You are also not the first of us to want this. I have walked the same path myself. The one who sired you was no demon, he was a kind and strong king, forgotten now by all but me. We met on a mountaintop. He was there with a hope to kill me and I answered his call out of my arrogance and lust to enjoy his desperate attempts before I broke him. We fell into a deep love instead. He could not leave his people and so I could not lengthen his life for him beyond the little bit that came in preparing him so that he survived our meetings there as we sought to tame each other. In his arms, I came closest to being tamed and in mine, he became a great king after I tamed him to my touch so that he would listen to my counsel, though time and sand have removed everything."

She looked down, "Aside from you, he was my greatest joy and is still my deepest sadness."

Maezou's jaw hung open, "I never knew..."

Her mother looked up a little wistfully, "I could not tell you before. The best way to protect a secret is not to know it at all." She touched Maezou's cheek, "It doesn't matter anymore. You are long grown and he is long dead. You are half-blooded. That is why some of the pit masters hate you, and it is why you are the best huntress. You were not spawned to be some pit demon's lackey. You came to be spawned out of our love, but I had to hide you and so you were given to the pit masters as a huntress very early. Only your first ruler knew who you were." She looked down sadly, "I did not know how long it would be until you would have a chance to get out."

"Be glad that your ruler fell to a foolish brute. If he were less dimwitted, he would have known of you beforehand and would be seeking for you now with every fiend and imp under his dominion. If you want a love with this one, it must be done so that you are spared the pain of his death at the end of his short human life. I never saw your father's soul after he passed. He is where I cannot reach him. I can only feel his longing. I hope that he cannot feel mine. Thousands of years and I still ache to hold him."

The moment was gone as her mother's face grew determined. "But you are exposed now and without the protection of being bound. There is a way, and you even know it from the texts you have read long ago."

Maezou nodded as she remembered.

The storm demon looked down at Toby, "To do this changes many things. He must know before it is begun in earnest. The three things must be done and the words must be spoken in our tongue and then his so that he understands it. There will not be much time in days, but after the first task, you may pass time with him as you teach him a little. Spend some of this time deciding fully so that you do not make a mistake for this is almost impossible to undo while you both live."

Before Maezou's face could really show the hope at what she was beginning to feel, her mother held up a hand to caution her. "Even so, there is great risk. He may die, or he may pass through and not even know you. Even if it comes to pass, you will both be in danger from others until he is strong enough. But if this is what you want, my heart is with you. The rest ... I hope that he lives, Daughter. If you want this chance, my girl, take it, but he must know of the binding laws at the least before." Maezou found herself looking at her mother's eyes as they flashed in warning. "At the least."

The red eyes glowed softly, "You can begin it now a little, and then maybe he will live. He will feel better for it. Even if he chooses against it, your gift will be payment for his kindness to you, no? That was a rare thing, what he did for you. There is no other of them who would have done it."

Maezou wondered at the beginnings of the curious smile that her mother now showed her as she continued, "It should tell you some things. Something about him, and about the one who delayed his travels with obstacles so that he would pass by when you fell."

Maezou's eyes widened, "It was you? You brought him to see me fall?"

She nodded with a warm smile, "A mother's gift. I was granting your wish long before it was on your lips. You were thinking that what happened had to mean something. It does, Daughter, but I played only a part in it. I have been busy this night after waiting so long for the chance of it. When I saw that you would be unbound, I knew that I had the chance for you in my hand. I only tried to make certain that you could be seen when you fell."

She nodded toward Toby, "That it was him was pure luck, fortune, fate perhaps, and I hope at least a little destiny for I could not come to you myself to watch over you then. It would have been noticed and even so, imagine what would have come from it. Me and my unbound daughter together in one place and desperate?"

She shook her head, "This storm is only to hide you and even so, it has already killed some innocents. Imagine what it would be as a weapon to keep my child safe."

"Out of the few who traveled the road, he was the best one by pure chance and he has no one. If you are bound to him, I see the turning of some tides. We two were not meant to be servants in the pits and smeared with the same filth that those ones wear. I was here from almost the beginning – before there was such an animal as a human, and we are both older than any dogma of man's. I walk freely, Daughter. I do what this world needs and try to keep some natural forces in balance as I always have. You could help one day. I walk freely and so should you."

She smiled, "The road goes easier with his hand to hold, I think. Bind yourself to him and you will have his calmness as you walk it together. I warn you that if this is done he will come into his own power because of you. If someone tries to harm you, his wrath will be terrible to them, so know this and have a care."

She smiled, "You are my daughter and so you can be pure chaos, far worse in turmoil than almost any but me. How many hopeful demons have you killed or ruined? How many have you laid down in pieces because they got in your way as you hunted?" She nodded at Toby, "If roused, he will be ruthless if he sees a threat to you. But to have you bound - and even better - mated to one like him is the best chance that I can see for you to walk away from the pits forever. You would have no need to hide then and with luck you would be happy together."

"But first, he must live and still love you. It is no small thing."

Toby's sleeping face was bathed in the glow of their eyes for a moment. Her mother grinned, "If it matters to you what I think, Daughter, you have chosen well."

"You mean you have chosen well for me," Maezou said, smiling.

"Ah," the storm demon laughed softly, "and what was that I heard in your prayer, before you knew the part I have played? He was the only one near to where you would fall. I did not choose him for you. You have made your own choice in this one. If you fell into a field of men you would still find yourself in his arms because the rest would run. I knew it would be this way when I saw him. I only had to bring you together and so I have. You already have his heart fairly where none that he could find for himself wanted him. It counts for much in the balance of things. Begin it now if you wish for him so strongly."

Maezou nodded, and as her mother's enchantment held him asleep, she whispered "I give this small gift to you, Toby." She carefully nicked his arm with her teeth and swirled her tongue against the tiny wound before healing it with her kiss. Her eyes were wide at what she tasted. She stared at her mother, "He does love me! Even now!"

Her mother grinned, "It holds no surprise for me, and now he has a tiny bit of yours for him. If you can manage it, and if he agrees, then you both should begin in the morning with the first thing. I will bring another storm soon after and over the night to hide you for the second task - you will be most vulnerable then, but I will protect you both until it is ended – if he lives. If it is good between you I will stay near until he can at least protect himself a little. After that, we will hope and see what may come. Do what you can for him and we will speak again. I need help from you later, and you will need his protection when he becomes mighty. There are many pit masters who would want you both."