Gilded Ashes-Chapter 338: She Did

The golden light held steady in his palm.

Raizen stood in the middle of the clearing, mud on his back, blood drying on his upper lip, both lotuses cupped in his hands. The instact one was the same dark flower he knew. The other was something else entirely - warm, breathing, awake.

Kenzo had moved closer, hammer resting against his shoulder, his head tilted at the angle of a man who had wandered outside his area of expertise and was deciding whether to care.

"Seriously, though" he said. "Those are pretty. Where did you get them?"

Raizen closed his fingers slightly around the lotuses. "They’re a gift. From a friend."

"Some gift? I’ve never seen a flower like that."

"It’s... New."

Kenzo looked at the glowing centre for another moment, the pale gold light reflecting faintly in his eyes, and then shrugged the way he shrugged about things he’d decided to ignore rather than pursue. "Well, sorry I broke it. Whenever you’re ready to continue getting hit, let me know."

Raizen didn’t respond. His attention was still on the lotus - on the warmth of it against his skin, the steady light, the emotional residue of memories he hadn’t chosen to revisit but was kind of glad he had.

Then the jacket started moving.

A few meters away, on the root where he’d left it, the folded fabric shifted. The side pocket bulged, twitched, and the lizard hauled itself out, like it was curious but didn’t want to admit it.

It flopped onto the jacket’s surface belly-first, and blinked twice. Yawned - an enormous yawn relative to the size of its head, the wide mouth opening to a degree that didn’t really seem safe. Then its eyes found the glow.

The pupils widened.

"Oh" it said, quietly, so only Raizen would hear it. "Oh, that’s - hold on, what did you DO?"

It scrambled to its feet, slipped on the jacket’s fabric, stood up again, and pointed one tiny front foot at Raizen’s hand with the accusatory energy of someone who had left the room for five minutes and returned to find the house on fire.

"I left you alone for - what - ten minutes? Fifteen? And you’ve gone and already broken one of them? You colossal bumbling WRECKAGE of a human being, I TOLD you to be careful with those!"

Raizen walked over, and crouched beside the root. "I didn’t break it on purpose. Kenzo’s hammer -"

"Oh, wonderful. Wonderful! So the big one with the stick has been smashing you around and the flowers just happened to be in your pocket. Brilliant. Outstanding strategic thinking. Truly the decision-making of a future legend."

The lizard was pacing now - back and forth across the jacket’s surface in tiny agitated loops, its tail whipping behind it, spikes rising and falling with each turn. But its eyes kept pulling back to the glow. Every few steps, mid-rant, its gaze would drift to the lotus in Raizen’s hand and its stride would falter for a fraction of a second before the pacing resumed.

"Do you have ANY idea -" It stopped. Turned. Stared at the flower. Started pacing again. "Do you have any idea how rare - I mean, not that I know exactly how rare, some details are still being - the POINT is -"

It stopped again. The glow was doing something to it. Every time the lizard looked at the lotus, its voice lost half a decibel, its pace slowed, and the ranting energy dimmed like a flame in a draft. It was fighting it - visibly, physically fighting the pull of whatever the glow was doing to it - and losing ground with every glance.

"The point IS" it said, louder this time, overcompensating, "that you’re an irresponsible, ham-fisted, disaster-prone -"

Raizen held the lotus closer.

The lizard’s mouth stayed open, the next insult already formed and ready for deployment, but nothing came out. The golden light washed over its face, filling the dilated pupils with paired reflections of the flower’s centre. The spikes, which had been rising and falling in agitation, settled flat.

It sat down on the jacket. Abruptly, the way a person sits when their legs decide the conversation is over before their brain does.

"I... wasn’t finished yelling at you" it said, quieter.

"I know" Raizen answered flatly. "Now shush"

The lizard looked at the lotus. Its front foot extended - slowly, one tiny leg reaching toward the glowing centre, the claws curling slightly. Then it pulled the foot back. Extended it again. Pulled it back. Extended it, almost touched the surface, and yanked it away like the flower was hot.

"I’m not - this isn’t - I don’t have FEELINGS about a stupid flower" it announced, to no one in particular, while very clearly having feelings about a stupid flower.

It touched the lotus.

One claw, resting on the glowing centre. The lightest possible contact.

The glow pulsed. A single warm flare radiating outward through the petals and into the lizard’s foot, up its leg and through its small body, lighting the black scales from within - a network of golden lines flaring beneath the surface for a fraction of a second before fading. The lizard’s entire form shimmered, every scale edge briefly visible, the dark shape outlined in pale gold.

The lizard yanked its foot back and tucked it against its chest. Its spikes shot straight up. Its pupils contracted to slits, then blew wide again, then contracted again, the eyes unable to decide what they were feeling.

"That was - that didn’t -" It looked at its own foot, clutched against its chest. Looked at the lotus. Looked at Raizen. "I felt nothing. That was nothing. Absolutely standard Eon resonance, completely unremarkable, I’m not even going to comment on it."

It was already commenting on it.

"For the record" it continued, its voice slightly higher than normal, "I have touched thousands of - well, perhaps not thousands, the exact number - the POINT is, that flower is simply a well-constructed vessel and the resonance I just experienced was purely mechanical and had absolutely zero emotional -"

It stopped.

Its mouth closed. Opened. Closed again.

Something crossed its face that the lizard very obviously did not want crossing its face. Something that slipped through the cracks between the ranting and the deflecting and the aggressive denial, just for a moment, before the walls came back up.

"She made this for you" it said.

The voice was different. Still the lizard’s voice - still small, still textured with the self-importance that coloured everything it said. But the performance layer had thinned, and underneath it, just barely, something honest pressed through.

"She really made this for you." It blinked. Twice. Fast. Then it sniffed, loudly, and drew itself up to its full height - which was approximately three centimetres - and fixed Raizen with a look of supreme indifference that was working very hard to disguise itself as genuine.

"Anyway. I don’t care. It’s just a flower. Put it away before you break the other one too, you absolute roughnut."

It turned around, marched back to the jacket pocket with exaggerated purpose, climbed inside, and curled up with its tail over its face.

From inside the pocket, muffled:

"...and stop getting hit by that hammer. You’re embarrassing both of us."

Raizen stayed crouched beside the root. The glowing lotus in one hand, the dark one in the other. The forest dim and green around him, Ukai’s lanterns flickering far above.

He looked at the pocket where the lizard had disappeared. The tail-tip was poking out, the membrane along its fin trembling faintly.

"Yeah" he said softly. "She did."