Chp.8: Talking between brothers

Following Haku's advice, the dragons rested and ate their fill in preparation for the rest of their journey. After all, they'd been running all night and they wanted to relax a bit before moving on. Even Haku decided to take the opportunity to rest: he found a large smooth rock and lay down on it, enjoying the warmth of the sun.

Unbeknownst to him, Rhaegal was watching him. His brother never once let him out of sight the whole time. When he saw that he was lying down on the rock, Rhaegal finally seemed to calm down and looked away from him. He decided to take advantage of that moment of calm to go and drink a bit at that pond that Haku had mentioned. It wasn't difficult for him to verify the veracity of the information and identify the puddle of water: even though the precious liquid was odourless, in fact, the salty scent of the mud and wet plants that surrounded it were unmistakable.

It took no more than five minutes to reach the pond. It was a rather small pool of water, but it was very clean thanks to the almost completely rocky ground. There were few plants and little mud, which made the water very good. Rhaegal began to drink heavily: he hadn't noticed it, but he was very thirsty.

"Hey brother!"

Rhaegal snorted at the voice. "What do you want, Darbi?" he said without raising his head from the water. He had noticed that his brother was following him, since as Haku had told them they must keep their senses sharp now that they knew there were dangerous animals in the area, but he had ignored him until then because he knew that talking with him she would bring up unpleasant topics.

Darbi walked over to him and lowered her head to drink too. Unlike his brother, he seemed much more relaxed. "What do I want? Now I can't even want to spend some time with you?" he asked rhetorically. "Come on, it's been a long time since we've been together, just you and me. If I remember correctly, that's when we caught that pig... How it was called? Calidonius?"

"We weren't alone, Teramon was with us. And the calidonius aren't pigs, they are boars" Rhaegal said.

"Uh… you're right. Then I'm afraid I don't remember the last time we were truly alone" Darbi murmured. "Well, never mind! We can fix it now, can't we? We have some time, so what do you want to do? How do you want to spend your time with your brother?"

Rhaegal took a big gulp of water, then finally raised his head. "I don't know" he admitted. "I mean, we don't have much time. I can't think of anything that..."

"Then I choose! It's a game I invented" Darbi stopped him. Under the bewildered gaze of his brother, he searched inside his dimensional bag and pulled out some stones with a vaguely round shape. One of them was made of some material which made it reddish in colour. "I thought about this game one day while we were in the forest, and I looked for these stones to be able to play it. I was waiting for the right moment to play it with someone, but we were always in a hurry, so...". He shrugged annoyed. "But we can play with it now, can't we?"

Rhaegal looked confused at the stones. To his eyes, they looked no different from ordinary rocks. "Okay, but... what are we supposed to do with these stones?" he asked.

"It's easy". Darbi threw away the red stone, which rolled a short distance away. "We just have to throw the stones next to the red one. When we're done, whoever of us threw the closest stone wins"

"That doesn't seem very funny to me" Rhaegal opined unconvinced.

Darbi gave him one of the stones. "You can't know until you try, can you?"

Rhaegal felt ridiculous about throwing stones, but after all, he had no reason not to please his brother. At least that way he would pass the time. So he threw his stone, which rolled quite a distance from the red rock. This annoyed him a little. But it annoyed him even more that Darbi soon after managed to throw his stone much closer than his. Moved by competitiveness, he immediately grabbed another stone and threw it, this time calculating the trajectory much better.

That game eventually turned out to be more fun than expected; although it was very simple, it was intriguing to try to predict where the stone would fall... or to tease the opponent when he made a mistake and got angry, which made the whole game more fun. In the end it was Darbi the one who won, but Rhaegal had to admit he enjoyed that match. "It's a good game. What's it called?"

"I didn't give it a name. How could I call it after all? Pebbles? Rocks?" Darbi shook his head. "Nothing good can come up with. 'Come on, let's play pebbles.' It sounds really bad"

It was true, they weren't much of a name. "Well, the object of the game is to hit the red rock. You could call it 'hit game', don't you think?"

Darbi almost laughed. "In this way it looks like it's a game of stoning someone, not throwing stones at other stones"

Rhaegal chuckled back. Actually the brother was right. "Well, we'll come up with a good name sooner or later" he said, then looked in the direction they had come from. "It's been a while. Should we go back?"

"Nah, if they had wanted to leave again they would have already called us. I think that the others want to relax a bit too" Darbi replied. "Let's stay here a little longer. Do you want a rematch?"

Rhaegal shook his head. "No, not now. But I can assure you that I will train, and that one day I will wipe that smirk off your face" he answered with a defiant look.

"Ha ha! Yes, yes, believe it" Darbi laughed. "Anyway, if you liked it, we could teach this game to others too, don't you think? It would be fun to play it all together. I'm sure many of our sisters would find it intriguing... even that curmudgeon Kotaru, and I bet Haku would like it too..."

"Yes, we should teach the others" Rhaegal said quickly, and a shadow passed over his face.

The smile on Darbi's face faded. He looked undecided for a moment, then said, "Rhaegal, sorry, I know you don't want that. But we need to talk about Haku"

His brother snapped his claws. "That's why you came here, right?" he grumbled.

But to his surprise, Darbi shook his head. "I'm not good at planning. I leave that task to Haku. When I want to say something, I just say it" he replied. "I came here because I really wanted to spend some time with you... and because I was looking for someone who would be willing to play this game with me"

Rhaegal was somewhat surprised. He was sure that Darbi had come with a specific intention… but after all, it wasn't in his brother's personality to behave that way. "You really didn't come here to discuss about… that?"

Darbi sighed. "No, I didn't come to discuss about Haku. But I noticed how just mentioning his name bothers you, so I think it's appropriate to talk about it seriously"

Rhaegal bit his lip indecisively. Personally, he didn't like the idea of ​​talking about Haku. But he knew Darbi wouldn't let him go so easily. "Okay. You speak first, I'll listen"

Darbi didn't seem convinced, but spoke anyway: "Listen, I know how Haku treated you, and you have the right to be afraid of him. I was there too, I saw how he behaved. He scared me too... if only a little" he hastened to add. "I'm not asking you to forgive him and forget everything, because I know that would be impossible. But... could you at least try to give him another chance now that he's apologized?"

Rhaegal snorted. He expected those would be his brother's arguments. "No, Darbi, I can't" he answered simply.

Darbi seemed discouraged, but he didn't stop: "If you don't want to do it for yourself, at least do it for the family! You saw what happened yesterday, didn't you? Many of our sisters no longer trust him. By continuing like this, we risk split us from the inside. But you are directly involved in this dispute, since you are the one who has been treated worse, so if you at least pretend to give him a second chance, maybe the others will be less..."

"Darbi, aren't you listening to me? I can't! It's not a matter of doing it for me or for the others!" Rhaegal exclaimed. "I've tried to do that before, okay? I've told myself that same speech of yours in my head and I've tried to pretend nothing happened. But I can't. If he's within ten meters of me, all I do is watch my back"

Darbi was dumbstruck. He hadn't expected Rhaegal to say those things to him. But your brother didn't stop. "It doesn't matter if I try to think of him as the good brother who has guided us so far, or if I try to convince myself that from now on things will change... every time I look at him, my mind goes back to that moment. To when he spoke to me like that after I tried to challenge his choices. You only saw that scene from the outside, but I was the direct protagonist. Darbi, in that moment, when I stared into those eyes, I expected that he would jump on me at any moment and bite off my horns. I can't get that image out of my head. I tried, but I can't. I can't stop to think that he is dangerous"

Darbi did not know what to answer him. "But Haku isn't dangerous..."

"Yes, Darbi, he IS dangerous!" Rhaegal exclaimed. "Look what he did. He tricked us, he killed our mother and treated us as if we were his servants, and if it wasn't for you or Kotaru… yeah, I know you told him… it didn't wouldn't have even occurred to his brain that he had done something wrong. Do you know what people act like that? The psychopaths!"

Rhaegal was so tense that his tail wagged involuntarily and hit the ground with a thud. "And even now that you, or Kotaru, or anyone else has explained to him where he went wrong, and even now that he's apologised... nothing has changed. You saw him last night, he did everything to convince us to follow the his plan. When it came time to implement it, he already had in mind that he would do it together with someone else, without consulting us. And a little while ago he arbitrarily decided where we would rest and why. He still expects us to obey his every request, he behaves as if he were our master. Even though he has promised to tell us about his future plans, that doesn't mean that his mentality has changed"

Darbi didn't know what to answer. "I'm sure Haku didn't notice what he was doing..."

"That doesn't justify him, Darbi. Indeed, the fact that he gives us orders without realizing it demonstrates even more how he sees us. From his point of view, he is at the top of the pyramid and we are below, ready to obey him as if we were soldiers He doesn't realize we don't have to" Rhaegal replied, then he shook his head. "I'm sorry, Darbi, I know you just want to help. But I can't ignore it. I… I can't live with him around"

Those last words shocked Darbi. "What do you mean with 'you can't live with him around'?"

he asked. Rhaegal seemed to realize just then what I had said. "I..." he sounded indecisive at first, then his voice became more confident: "I mean exactly what I said. I don't want him around, not anymore. I don't feel safe with him around. And the same goes for almost everyone else. Our sisters are no longer sleeping or walking in groups of less than four because they are afraid of what might happen to them". Rhaegal turned and started walking towards where their brothers were. "Sorry, Darbi, I know you just want to help Haku. You are a good brother. But he is dangerous. The sooner you understand this, the better for you"

Darbi watched his brother walk away. He opened his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out of it. In the end he simply said: "Haku just wants to protect us"

Rhaegal paused for a moment, then said, "That is precisely the problem, brother. He wants to protect us... but he doesn't understand the difference between healing a wound and making it even worse"