The forest wore its noon like a green cloak — thick leaves sieving sunlight into a quilt of gold and shadow. Jin walked with a steady, unhurried gait, sensing the pulse of the island through the soles of his boots: damp earth, crushed fern, the faint salty breath that came in from the sea beyond the trees. Movement stitched through the foliage ahead — a bright flash of silver fur, a living comet racing between trunks. Shizana came like joy made flesh, a blur of motion carrying a shape upon her back.
As the animal closed, Jin watched the small white shape grow into a woman folded in sleep: Rina, limp and pale, the traces of the phoenix-heat still faint around her like the last embers of a fire. Shizana skidded to a halt and bowed her head, tail beating the air in a delighted rhythm. The great creature's silver coat shivered; the sheen of her fur caught the dappling light and scattered it in tiny moons across the moss.
Shizana settled, lowering herself until her haunches met the earth. She dropped into a buyer's reverence, ears tipping forward. "Master," she said in the soft bell-tone she reserved for him, "how fare you?" Her tail kept time like a small drum; she was eager and trembling with the quiet excitement of an animal greeting its master.
Jin smiled, a brief flash that softened the corner of his eyes. He reached out with the gentleness of someone who had learned a particular kind of kindness: short, deliberate strokes along the wide expanse of Shizana's head, then under her chin where the fur was thick and warm. The creature made a soft whimper that was half delight and half gratitude, and her pink tongue licked his knuckles in an eager, affectionate motion.
Shizana's joy was a small thing, domestic and immediate; the hush of the forest swallowed it like the sun swallowing a bird's note. Jin shifted then and moved toward Rina. He crouched and brushed a hand across her cheek; her skin was warm, flushed from fever and the ordeal, but the tightness in her muscles had eased. He frowned once, a small crease between his lashes.
"Why is she like this?" he asked, more to the trees than to any of the assembled company.
Shizana answered without hesitation. "She fought Nox, who was host to Zakaros. He attempted to strike at Leona; Rina interposed herself. The burden of that blow and the inner wound left her spent. I cradled her and brought her here. The mana binds carry her but cannot mend everything." Her voice had the clear, practical cadence of one who sees pain and does what must be done without theatricality.
Jin allowed himself an almost mocking chuckle that was softer than it had any right to be. "Heroic virtues," he murmured. "Predictable and noble to a fault. My dragon-wife saves others before herself — classic." He set his jaw, but the mockery dissolved into something like warmth; affection flickered beneath the irony. There was always that—Rina's stubborn, brave kind of kindness. He liked it, even if it annoyed him.
He gathered mana in a measured, practiced way — green-lunar mana, the rhythmic, cooling tide his mother had taught him to trace. He did not reach for the raw machinery of god-energy; he was still learning to live with that deep, unfamiliar core. With careful intent his right hand glowed a soft turquoise, the light steady and cleansing rather than searing. He pressed the palm of his hand to Rina's forehead.
A hush fell. The forest seemed to lean in, listening. The green mana moved with the calm of tidewater, sliding into her temples and along the threads of exhaustion that braided themselves inside her skull. It soothed the ache clenched behind her eyes, eased the small terror lodged in the chest, unknotted the tight coil of shock so that warmth could return to dull places.
Rina made a small sound — a tendril of a moan that dissolved in the leaves — and the tightening at her brow softened. Her lashes fluttered, the lids trembling like moths at dusk. Jin removed his hand and watched as she blinked and turned her head. The first thing she saw was sky, a patch of blue caught in the canopy, and then the silver blur of Shizana's flank and, finally, the face that had been the axis of her half-dream: dark hair, crimson eyes, the faint amusement at its edges.
Recognition sprang in her like light through glass. For a heartbeat she was still, the world held in a single suspended second. Then movement: an instinctive, urgent motion. Rina's fingers sought purchase; she slid her weight from the beast and before thought could iron out the world she had leapt, arms circling Jin's chest. She buried her face against him and sobs came, quick and hot, a spill of fear and relief that had nowhere to be saved.
"Where were you?" she choked into him, voice ragged with the pooling of too many nights. "I missed you. I— I was alone. I thought — I thought I would not see you again. Why did you leave me? Why—"
The river of her grief broke in his arms; tears were sudden, honest. She beat at his chest like a small, frantic animal, each slap a punctuation of the jumble of sorrow and anger and need. Her cry was sharp and elemental, an ache wrenched out of bone and given to air.
Shizana, respectful of what was private between master and mate, padded back a few paces and lowered herself until she lay with her head atop her paws, a silver sentinel watching with patient eyes. Even in that animal's gaze there was the tender understanding of privacy: she knew this was a moment that belonged to them.
Jin did not know how to fold sorrow into a smooth console. The gift of affection had become a language he seldom spoke; the grafting of cold resolve on top of everything had taught him ways of being that did not always include solace. He stood still at first and let Rina pour out the torrent. When he finally moved, it was with a small, formal gesture: his hand found the crown of her head and smoothed it in the most gentle, uncertain way he could manage. The touch was simple and precise, a small mercy as meaningful as any grand phrase.
Rina looked up, cheeks wet and hair clinging to her temples, and seized him by the collar with a desperate, animal gravity. She rose onto her toes, the motion fierce with need, and pressed her mouth to his in a kiss that held every kind of pleading and gratitude wrapped into one single, shaky demand. The kiss was long and soft rather than wild; it steadied them both. Her hands trembled a little when she drew back, breath hitching, and for an instant the forest's air felt like a held note.
Jin's expression did not change much — a tiny smile, indulgent and private — but the small, rare warmth at his lips answered hers, and something like patience — arduous, learned — settled in his chest. He let her have the contact. He let her cling. He let the softness be what it needed to be without trying to name or fix it.
Then, in a riotous manner, he bit Rena's private lip, and this was the biggest mistake that Jin made, opening the doors of lust for Rina.
Rina's heart started beating strongly and Jin was clueless about what he did while Rina let out a moan of pleasure and Jin thought it was a moan of pain or something similar.
Rina, whose body had borne flame and blood and daring, allowed herself to be held for a long moment. The fire in her did not cool; if anything it purred beneath her skin, a gentle ember. She pushed back once and laughed — a ragged, relieved sound that tasted of salt and ember — and then, with the physical ease of one who was reclaiming her place, moved to sit beside him on the moss. She shaped a soft, protective dome of earth-magic: a low ring of soil and roots, an opaque shelter that kept the world beyond them at bay. Within that small circle she made warmth and light with a practiced flick — a soft, amber glow that wrapped them like a hearth.
Hands found fabric and loosened — but nothing obscene unfolded. It was the tender work of two people who had been scraped and burned and had returned not to indulgence but to care: Jin smoothing a wayward strand of hair, Rina tucking his collar, Shizana's tail thumping with contentment. The air smelled of moss and phoenix-ashes and the faint metallic tang of healing, a heady, strange perfume of survival.
Around them the forest resumed its measured breathing. Birds resumed their timid calls. The island measured its safety in small increments: one breath, one heartbeat. For now, Jin and Rina sat in the little pocket they had carved out of the world — a slow, intimate place of repair. The future, with its wars and choices and the weight of other houses, waited beyond the canopy. Here, for a moment, there was only the moss, the soft light, and the small, human work of being together.
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Heat: Thanks for reading
Note: Shizana is outside the barrier, inside the barrier are only Jin and Rena