Kindling Mischief

For obvious reasons, Kies decided not to share the same bed as her. In fact, he chose to stay up all night, feeding sticks and grass into the fire when was about to die. Surprised, Kies had more than enough sticks and dried grass to supply the fire for the entire night and stopped once the sun peeked over the horizon and the temperature rose.

Even then, he still had a few sticks and a couple of stalks of grass left over. Ugh, he really needed to be more careful next time. He shouldn't have gathered so many of them and drawn suspicion to himself. Iris has already learned one of Kies' biggest secrets and was trying to figure out anything else she can about him. As for the other two, they were still clueless as of right now, but they will soon find out as well, either through seeing it for themselves or Iris telling them.

Even though the sun had risen, the skies were still dark as the rain clouds had yet to leave, and it was still raining. The thunder had stopped and the light had lightened by a bunch. Kies checked in on the soldiers and saw that they were still asleep as well. It looks like they didn't have to worry about waking up early to evade the soldiers.

Kies walked over to the entrance of the cave. He glanced back at the three and saw that they were still sleeping. And besides not sleeping with Iris for moral reasons, there was another reason why he was glad that he didn't share the same bed as her. Apparently, Iris moved around a lot in her sleep. She constantly shifted from one side of the bed to the other and swung her arms and legs all over the place. Several times, she even rolled a bit too close for comfort to the campfire and Kies had to roll her back to the wall so she didn't accidentally set herself on fire.

The more time that Kies spent with her, the less that she looked like a princess. Kies really wondered if the queen of Otane is the same as her. Maybe Iris picked up her bad habits from her older sister. But the chances of that being true were unknown to Kies as he has never met her before... Or has he? It was so long back and Kies remembered meeting a princess during the siege of Silverfield. Was she Jenabas? Kies could scarcely remember it.

But whatever the answer was, Kies didn't care. He walks out of the cave and into the rain. All around them were brownish-yellow grass that was no longer than a couple of inches. Unlike the grass they passed before which was only a few centimeters, the grass here was a bit taller because there was a stream nearby. Kies heads over to the stream and looks around it for food.

The stream is around ten meters wide and flows from the top of the hill from out of a hole, and disappears downhill into another hole in the ground. It was quite the mystery where the water came from and where it went, but that wasn't important. What was important is that since there was water here, there had to be bound to be food nearby. Whether it was small critters or fruits, Kies wanted to bring a couple back to the cave before they woke up so that they could eat and start moving as soon as possible. The reason was simple. The earlier they start moving, the more ground they can cover. The more ground they cover, the faster they can reach Otane. And the faster they can reach Otane, the less time Iris has to dig into his identity and secrets. The last thing he wanted was for that annoying princess to learn a bit too much about him.

The grass rustles with each step Kies takes. The sound of the stream flowing and the birds chirping made the place seem more lively than it looked. Kies spotted movement somewhere on the other side of the river and squinted his eyes until he found it. It was a rabbit. It had yellow fur and extremely long ears that were out of proportion with the rest of its body. Kies hadn't had a good look at the ones that he caught last night since it was so dark but the creature reminded him of something... They reminded him of the Bone Whistler. They both had body parts that were oddly way out of proportion with their bodies.

We're these things really that hard to catch as Iris said they were? There was only one way to find out. Kies empowered himself with the blessing of the winds and pounced to the other side of the stream at lightning speed. He saw the rabbit in front of him get closer until he was close enough to grab it. "Gotcha." Kies closed his hands on the creature and rolled several times when he rolled onto his feet.

Huh, so Iris had exaggerated it. These rabbits were not that hard to catch, especially when you were faster than lightning. Or so that was what he wanted to say, but unfortunately, Iris was right. Kies had missed the rabbits. His arms were empty and Kies looked around and saw the yellow bouncer hopping away across the tall grass. It camouflaged almost perfectly with the grass and it looked like the grass itself was moving but Kies knew that it was the rabbit.

Kies kneeled down and got ready to pounce again. He waited for the rabbit to hop up into the air when it wouldn't be able to change its trajectory as it was midair to snatch it. Kies watched the rabbit jump around the grass and timed its hops and waited for the perfect moment. 'One, two, one, two... Now!' Kies speeds towards the rabbit with his arms wide open and grabs it as it is about to land.

The rabbit squirms and squeals in his hands and tries to break free but Kies doesn't let it go. D*mn, these things really were hard to catch. Even using a significant amount of his magic to boost his speed, he almost didn't catch the critter.

"Well, that's breakfast," Kies notes to himself. He kills the rabbit quickly and painlessly with his magic and then hunts two more down with his magic as well. Of course, he didn't try catching these two and instead shot them with wind magic from the sky. They couldn't react to what they couldn't see and the two of them died in an instant. Kies recovered the bodies and turned around to return to the cave but stopped when he spotted something moving behind the trees.

Kies sent his winds out to identify what it was and saw that it had a humanoid figure. What!? Was it a soldier? How did they get here? Kies quickly sends the winds further or to check if he was surrounded but is relieved to see that he isn't. It was a lone person. So maybe it was a scout sent ahead to find them and report back? If that is the case, then this wasn't a problem. He could easily take on a single soldier.

Kies put the rabbits on the ground and slowly walked over to the tree. He wasn't going to use his sword because he didn't want to kill the soldier as he wanted to get some information out of them. He stops a meter around the tree and gets ready to tackle the soldier to the ground when a flash of red suddenly appeared from behind the tree and crashed into him. Kies rolled backward and tried to get on his feet but the soldier tackled him, ironically doing what he had planned to do to the soldier, and pinned him to the ground.

"Not fast enough," he heard a familiar voice say.

Kies looks up at the person sitting on top of him and discovers that it wasn't a soldier, but instead, Iris.

"..."

"And here I thought you can react in time because you caught another three of those rabbits," Iris looks at the three rabbits that Kies caught again for them.

"If you can do this, couldn't you catch a few of them yourself?" Kies asked her, seeing how her speed was even faster than the rabbits' somehow.

"Yeah, I catch them all the time with my sisters. How do you think I got so fast?"

"I see." That makes sense why he couldn't even react to her at all despite being able to somewhat react in time to the rabbits' movements.

"Anyway..." Iris gets off Kies and lets him get up. "There's a stream here so I'm going to take a bath," she tells him. She was covered from head to toe in sweat and dirt. She needed to wash first before they continued their journey. "You better not look!" Iris warns him as she begins to take her clothes off.

"Don't worry, I won't." Kies picks up the rabbits and begins to head back to the cave. He hears a splash as Iris jumps into the stream behind him and pays no attention to it but she suddenly hears a cry for help.

"Help! I'm drowning! It's deeper than I thought!"

This idiot... Kies drops the rabbits and immediately turns around and jumps into the stream to reduce the foolish princess. He sees Iris splashing around and waving her arms in a panic near the middle of the stream. Kies swims towards her, grabs her, and starts to pull her back to shore when she suddenly brings him under with her due to her panicking.

Kies' hood falls off and water splashes everywhere. "What the h*ll are you doing!?" Kies yells at her. All she needed to do was stay calm and let him pull her out. Thrashing around like a wild animal wasn't going to get her to safety.

Kies hears a laugh and he looks up and sees Iris floating on top of the water. Actually, she wasn't even floating, she was standing. Kies looks down and sees that the stream was only a meter deep.

"..."

"That was easier than I thought. So this is what you look like. You look a lot more like a human than I thought... And a lot younger too," she takes note of how old he looked.

So that was her aim... She wanted to see what his face looked like the entire time. This cunning little devil... Kies could also see that not only had she faked her drowning, but she also lied about taking a bath. She still had all her clothes on. They were wet and he could see through them but the princess didn't seem to notice or if she did them she didn't care.

Kies sighed and averted his eyes. He turned around, flipped on his hood again, and walked out of the stream. What a headache. All his clothes were wet and it was going to take some time to dry all of them, but he had to admit, she got him pretty darn good. He needed to be more careful in the future so as to not fall for any more of her clever tricks.

"Aw... Don't you want to take a bath with me?" Iris asked in a disappointing voice.

"No. In the first place, who takes a bath with their clothes on anyway?"

"Oh my, were you hoping to see me naked? To be so blatant about it... You're a lot bolder than you look."

"..."

Kies didn't pay any attention to her remarks and just picked up the rabbits and went back to the cave. There he found that the other two were still asleep. It looked like Iris woke up and saw that he was missing and went to play a prank on him. Kies tossed the rabbits by the fire and went back outside. He went in the opposite direction of the stream and there he used his wind magic to dry his clothes without where no one could see him.

After he dried everything up, he went back to the cave and found Iris outside drying her clothes as well. And just like him, she was using her magic to do so. "I thought it was a good idea to wash my clothes at the same time. That's why I jumped in with them," she explained to Kies why she decided to take a bath with it on. "Speaking of which, do you want me to dry your clothes too? You know, since you jumped in as well."

"No."

"Really? Isn't it uncomfortable like that? Won't your clothes feel heavy and your skin clammy?"

"I'll manage."

"Will you? Come on, it's not like I'll set your cloak on fire or anything. Isn't that thing magic-proof anyway?" Iris grabbed Kies' cloak and felt that it was dry. "Wait what?"

"..."

"Don't tell me..."

---

Grammar errors, story errors, other errors, and advice, email flightless05@gmail.com

Thanks!