Dragon's World

29.

We make it out of Kassenna's house after Rune had to pry her off of us both. I couldn't stop laughing at the scene but I'm not sure whether to blame the giggles on the wine or not. As we walk down the street, back to Xavier's house, I've latched myself onto Rune's arm as my vision is a little blurry.

Once we get to the unoccupied alleyways, Rune shifts out of my grip and turns around just to scoop me up, into his arms. I shriek a little but mostly laughter comes out.

"I can walk just fine, thank you," I poke his mask on the cheek.

"That's why you had a death grip on my arm, right?" He laughs, continuing to walk on.

"Well, that's just so I didn't fall on my face. Your arms are stronger than mine so," I squeeze his bicep a little.

"I can't tell if you're flirting with me or if you're drunk from that wine. The wine here is a lot stronger than the wine from outside, we have a secret ingredient that you guys don't," he laughs again, his whole chest rumbling.

"Oh? What is it? Tell me," my attention calls to that secret ingredient, what it could be. Perhaps a different plants grows down here with a stronger alcohol content? Maybe they have a magical fountain that has secret minerals in it.

"If I tell you, you'll never drink it again," he shakes his head, laughing.

"No, no! I want to know! Tell me, please?" I resort to begging. I want to know more about this place. Nearly everything is completely different, it's like I'm on a whole other planet.

"If you insist," a moment goes by with a quick glance down at me. "Dragon piss," he continues walking, silently now as my mouth falls open in disbelief.

"You're joking?" I ask before laughing a little.

"Wish I were. You drank dragon piss," his eyes flash down at me, amused as ever.

"What? How? They have alcoholic pee?" I ask, laughing because I can't believe him.

"Not exactly. The vintners have to go through some long process with it to convert it into actually drinkable matter. If you go and drink a cup of dragon piss, you're going to die. It's highly acidic but the people who make the wine, figured out a way to turn it into less toxic stuff and mix it with regular wine. Once upon a time, we were running low on crops so wine and other delicacies, that we obviously couldn't give up, were growing scarce and had to be rationed," he goes through a little history lesson on what was in my glass at Kassenna's house but I can't seem to focus on it all.

I'm growing tired by the minute. We were woken in the middle of the night and the sun was already up when we first got here. I wonder if we'd traveled a few hours forward or a few hours back from our time zone that the house was in.

Oh the house, what a waste of a beautiful place. A lot of valuable things were there, food, the goats, memories. Poor Maddie, that was the first place that they'd stayed in longer than a week at a time, her home. And John, poor John.

I feel so terrible all of a sudden, going back through the memories of what actually occurred only a few hours ago. Tears start falling from my tired eyes now.

Rune stops and puts me down, pulling my mask off. He pushes his to the side a bit to reveal his face after wiping my tears away.

"What's wrong?" He wipes the new stragglers from my cheeks.

"I just remembered what happened and how it wasn't really long ago like I thought. John died, Rune. I could've saved him had I just shot that man first," I start sobbing now, heavy tears flow down my cheeks.