Celestial Fire (Nalu)

Chapter 59 - Lucy

Natsu and I quickly dry off from the quick shower and once we are dressed again, we make our way to the dining car. We somehow spent most of the two days in our room but we still have a few hours and now I'm starving. It wasn’t until we were almost done eating and the waiter had taken away nearly all of the dishes that our team came in. I am now just sipping on a blueberry smoothie and Natsu was trying to feed me some raspberries.

I giggled a little at him but kept my mouth closed until he pouted while still pressing it gently to my lips. I opened just enough for the berry and to kiss his fingers, making him lean in to kiss me.

I really can’t get enough of Natsu when he is like this; cute, sweet and cuddly. I just might pass out from all the fluffy cuteness! And it is everything that I could want.

He fed me another berry and this time I ate it willingly, gently sucking on his fingers before he could pull them away.

“Luce,” he growled in warning, smirking before he dived in for a deeper kiss.

“We don’t have time,” I whispered in his ear, teasing him more by licking my lips while I was so close, making my tongue glide over his skin as I did. He let out a frustrated growl but he pulled himself back.

“Is it safe?” Gray asked, looking anywhere but at us and I saw Happy roll his eyes at him but otherwise obvious him before flying over to make himself comfortable in my hood again.

“So what is the mission?” Happy asked, ignoring our friend altogether.

I pulled out the flier that Master gave us so we could read it:

Possible demon activity near a volcano, search and find evidence of what could cause white smoke to come out the the mouth of the volcano.

“Why does this seem so familiar?” I sighed and Happy and Natsu both groaned in agreement.

“At least we already know what we should do, divide and conquer and how?” Happy forced a smile and I just nodded. There isn’t much else we can do after all. We gave the rest of our team the general plan of action and even Erza nodded in agreement. Like I said, there isn’t much else we can do.

The train breaked and we left the dining car before finally leaving the station. The area was pretty, just like you would expect. The rather small mountains in the distance did make the town seem smaller but at the same time the soft white clouds in the sky only added to the peace of the small town. Just like usual there were hot springs, after all this was an ACTIVE volcano so there were plenty of natural springs nearby.

First we went to the requester’s house and after verifying the request we searched the town, asking anyone and everyone what all they knew. It wasn’t until it was getting dark that I found Happy talking to a young boy.

“Yeah, at night the Mt. Vicky has been glowing blue, so everyone is getting worried. I guess there are bad mages or something,” I overheard the boy tell Happy.

“Wow!” Happy let himself get extra curious and when the boy reached out to pet him he didn’t even complain. “So, how long has that been happening?”

“Um… Almost a year? I remember it started before my last birthday and I’ll be 9 next month!” The boy smiled and I saw Natsu close by listening in as well. There was some other general conversation and Happy was even able to find out that a new official was assigned to the area and no one seems to like him because he was “shifty.” The conversation did finally end when the boy ran off with his mother and I noticed just how dark it had gotten.

“So hiking?” I asked, the similarities are almost just too much. I wonder if there will be fire spiders here too? We found our team and dragged them behind us and towards the volcano. It was dark long before we even got half way up and it didn’t take long after that for us to see the blue light coming from high above. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there won’t be any fire spiders? I can hope right?

“Luce?” I looked up at Natsu’s voice before he continued on. “Have I ever told you that I really don’t like spiders?” His voice sounded so tired and I couldn’t help the quick bark of laughter that escaped me. Of all the things for Natsu to hate; a spider was not my first guess.

“Better question, who likes them?” I asked and he grinned in response.

“Erik likes them a lot. I thought he would hate them because of how much he likes snakes and just small wildlife in general,” I saw him shiver a little at the thought which only made me laugh a little bit but now I’m wondering how Natsu knows that he likes spiders. Does he have a pet spider? Why? Since when? Am I maybe thinking too much about this? Probably.

“Me neither,” Happy pouted, landing on Natsu’s shoulder before changing his mind and flying over to mine before crawling into my hood.

“Time to get to work,” I grinned, taking the lead and Happy whined before dragging himself out of my hood. I’m not letting him stay after all.

“Spiders?” Gray asked and when I looked at him even Erza looked confused but Wendy looked a bit pale.