Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

JIHAE

Approaching lunch, I stripped off my lightweight button-down and tied it around my waist, fanning the inside of my tank top with a waxy purple fern leaf. The jungle’s humid stillness was thick, the ground steaming as the heat rose into midday and misted my skin. I shoved another tombstone into the ground, heaving my weight over the stake.

Then goosebumps rose on my arms. I looked at my skin as tension twisted around my spine. One of my ears jumped, making me spin in a circle out of alarm.

“Naga, sheki ya!” I yelled, trying to imbue my hoarse voice with a semblance of confidence. Nothing stirred though, all the critters hunkered down and waiting like me… just smart enough not to make any noise.

The jungle had gone silent except for an eerie, chittery clicking in the shadows beyond the cemetery. I picked up the next tombstone by the stake and covered my back with it, swearing under my breath. I’d seen a documentary about Bengal tigers once, and how local hunters and farmers would wear a mask on the backs of their heads so the tigers wouldn’t pounce on them. My shaking palms immediately grew sweaty, so I gripped the stake hard with both hands and opened my eyes wide, spinning in a slow circle.

Then I groaned with embarrassment.

“Is that… Sizzle?” I asked, feeling like an idiot, looking at the shadows where I’d heard the sound.

A black draconic muzzle appeared out of the deep shadows to my right instead, teeth glinting in the overcast pink of the canopy. “In the flesh.”

I gasped, dropping the tombstone as I scuttled backwards, my butt hitting the levicart. A jack-o-lantern rolled off the platform at my feet as the black and bloody ferns parted around the colony’s resident bilong. My faraway evening greeter. We were acquaintances of a sort, waving and, ah, hooting at each other upon occasion. I felt like his shape was familiar to me, his mannerisms.

Even so, I hadn’t expected him to be so…

Much.

Sizzle was a behemoth, so much bigger than I’d thought at a distance. His wet fur steamed as the fog clung to his withers and jaws, floating up from his nostrils like incense. His ears were as long as my forearms, standing straight up so that his shadow looked like a massive black jackal. Flat gold eyes dilated from sharp slashes to round diamonds as he took in a deep breath, that razor-sharp, thousand-toothed grin closer to my stomach than was comfortable.

My eyes fixated on his neck, where his infamous mouth descended down the length of his throat. To either side sat a neatly folded set of… bat wings?

He hummed in his draconic lungs, licking his teeth from the sternum up, letting me watch his y-shaped mouth zip closed, his bifurcated lower jaw flexing as it settled into place.

“Do I scare you, morsel?”

I swallowed hard, hiding my shaking hands behind my back.

Was I scared? My heart was pounding and my legs felt weak. But I wasn’t repulsed. I didn’t want to crawl out of my skin or hide. I didn’t feel like I was drowning or that snake tails were flirting with my skin. I felt…

Okay.

“Only a little. And my name’s Jihae.”

“Are you sure? You smell afraid. Tangy,” he pondered, lifting his nose up my sternum to my neck.

Without even thinking, I flicked his nose and pointed straight in his face. “No,” I said forcefully, as if talking to Shikbang. He blinked at me, nose screwed up sideways with surprise. I held my breath, frozen in place.

What did I just do?!

Then Sizzle sat back on his haunches, lifted his head to the canopy, and howled with laughter. Birds and bugs that had been hiding in the shadows of the trees burst from the canopy in fright, and I swore my heart launched with them. It beat a thousand times a minute, punching my sternum in terror. I blinked at my finger, still pointed in Sizzle’s face, and pulled it back with a squeak, pressing my hand against my mouth.

“I’m so sorry!” I said, my voice muffled by my palm.

Sizzle reined himself in and looked at me with one reflective yellow eye, his head turned sideways with curiosity as he sized me up. “Why?”

“B-because I just scolded you like my mother’s dog.”

He purred in understanding, getting to his feet again, tail swishing behind him playfully. “Ah, the pet, yes? Is that what you see when you look at me?” he asked, prowling around my left side. “A pet?”

“No!”

“You expect me to jump up on you?” He bent closer, damp fur pressed against my shoulder. “Lick you in greeting?” My stomach flipped at his tone and suddenly it was hard to breathe. He reached around my leg with one massive claw. “This is what pets do, isn’t it?”

“I—”

“I rather like that you think of me this way. It’s much better than the smell of piss pants.”

I couched my lips between my teeth. This conversation was absolutely absurd.

“You… want me to think of you as a pet?”

Sizzle shrugged one graceful shoulder. “Many humans do. I think of you that way too.” He licked the top of his muzzle with a relatively narrow but long black tongue. “Let’s be mutual pets, hmm? And then you won’t smell so tangy.”

“Because fear is tangy.”

“Sour, yes.”

I groaned, flopping my face into my hands. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or not. Embarrassment washed over me again as my breath steamed my palms.

“I’m so sorry for the…” I actually didn’t know how to say flick in English, so I made the motion again with a grimace. “Aysh, I could have hurt you.”

Sizzle huffed a chuckle along the offending finger.

“It’s alright, morsel. I’m a beast, just like your dahg.” When I met his eyes, they glittered with sincerity. “I’m not offended. I’m impressed,” he murmured, pulling away.

“Oh…” I blinked at him, my knees weak, as he lifted the fallen jack-o-lantern, his claws carefully holding it by the holes of its toothy grin and eyes.

“I came to see if I could help. You shouldn’t work alone in the jungle.”

The air whooshed from my lungs in a confusing mixture of relief, gratitude, and excitement. I’d just swatted a bilong’s nose and lived to tell the tale. I brushed my palm over my forehead, swiping away the anxious sweat and flyaway hair as Sizzle put his front claws on the side of the levicart, looking over what things I had to work with. The cart tipped sideways under his weight as he set the jack-o-lantern back in its pile and chose the last tombstone. It was much larger than the others, plastered together by Wade and Mikaela, no doubt. A stony devil with a pitchfork and horns grinned from his perch on top, tail wrapped around the stone. Sizzle picked it up with one claw and looked at me expectantly.

“Ah,” I cleared my throat, looking at the space I’d reserved in the center of the cemetery. “This way. Can you turn his face to look at the trail?”

“Anything you want, morsel.” Sizzle set the devil’s grave in place and arrested my stare as he turned the handsome statue towards me. “Does this please you?”

Dizzy. That’s how I felt. Was this living, breathing dragon flirting with me? Was that even possible? He walked on four legs and had a muzzle.

My cheeks grew hot and my belly tightened as the silence dragged on.

“A little… little further right,” I breathed dumbly, unable to blink.

The bilong grinned, licking his teeth back into alignment as he moved the statue. After placing it, he returned, the strange bat wing membranes on the sides of his neck disappearing into his fur like a burrowing puppy under a blanket. Two of his claws emerged, a nutrient bar pierced between them. He dropped it into my upturned palms, enjoying my dumbfounded surprise.

“Thank you?”

“Your hands are shaking. Sit. Take a break,” he teased, grinning wide. “And instruct me on how to please you next. Perhaps the grinning gourds or corpse limbs will do the trick?”

He picked up a zombie hand with his tongue, gently couching several of them between his neck’s length of teeth, and winked. They stuck out of his open throat as if he’d swallowed several people, but his mouth was free to speak. His… His…

“What do you call those?” I asked, pointing to the bat wings.

“These?” He flexed them, expanding each digit out from his throat. They truly were like… like hands. Very long, thin fingers connected with a thin, webbed membrane.

“Articulated fangs, but mostly just mouth claws.” He wriggled them in greeting, then laced them together over his teeth like a wizened monk, hiding that infamous maw. Abruptly tickling his pearly fangs, he exposed the length of his unique throat once more, tapping his mouth claws against his enamel. Tink tink tink tink. “And these are throat teeth.”

My vision blurred, awed, in a stupor, unable to believe my eyes. No creature feature I’d ever seen compared to my new “mutual pet.” Sizzle used his mouth claws to pluck the nutrient bar from my palm and then shredded the wrapper, tucking it away. He pressed one mouth claw against my shoulder and I sat back on the edge of the levicart with a graceless thump.

“Still there?” he smoldered, enjoying himself thoroughly.

I blinked and brushed the sweat from my brow. I took the nutrient bar and smashed half of it in my mouth. Perhaps my face was a little too animated, trying to catch up to my brain’s reboot. His ear twitched and the breath stuttered in his massive lungs with satisfaction, like a stallion who’d just been given his grain bucket filled to the brim.

“Eat slow, morsel. There’s no rush.”

“My name is Jihae,” I reminded him.

“The teacher. I know.”

Then he stalked out into the cemetery, awaiting instructions.