Fan - A - Libur

Golden Strings

A huge, tall man towered over her. He smiled warmly and chuckled, then picked both of them up by their collars and held them up in the air. His face was strange, as if it had fur. Then Mitsuki saw two long, pointy ears twitching at the back if his head.
"Mmm....two lost pups, that's all." He looked over at the boy and gave him another pleasant smile.
"Foxy!" The boy laughed, kicking his legs in the air.
"And who might you be?" He turned his head to Mitsuki.
"I- I'm Mitsuki. I-"
"Well, Mitsuki, don't toy around with the unknown. You saw what happened. Now this guy," he put the boy down," is gonna teach you a bit of stuff while I'm busy. You don't seem very used to our....ways," he put Mitsuki down and watched as they walked over to a corner. Mitsuki had realised there was something....off about this boy. He lead her to a corner near the very edge of the ship, where a cool shade was cast. Something low caught Mitsuki's eye. A long, looping line was attached to him. A tail! She tried to act like nothing was wrong, but Mitsuki felt very out of place on this ship. Then he turned around, and started speaking," Umm....well....yeah...look, I hate Plague. He did something horrible to me and my family. My name's Tatsuo...and I really don't fit in. Everyone is so big and horrible, and I don't get along very well. You know that boy on the ship that got shouted at for whispering when you came? That was me. Umm.... well....," he started putting his hands all over his body, as if looking for something. Then he stopped and pulled out something." Aahh! There it is! The book. Okay so uhh, get this," he pulled a lute from nowhere, and handed it to Mitsuki while reading. She noticed a scribble of colour on the cover of the book.

~Orange Magic~

"Just like mine..." muttered Mitsuki.
"Sorry?" Asked Tatsuo.
"Oh-nothing," replied Mitsuki.
"So um, take this and then pull the top string there." He pointed to the sring.
Mitsuki didn't say anything, but instead she just did what was told. Slowly, she reached out her hand and stoked her finger gently across the string. It made a perfect harmonious sound, and then a little wisp of magic flew up, and twirled around Mitsuki's head.
"Okay, now play this one, this one, this one and this one, and just keep repeating it." He pointed to several strings, golden, all different sizes, and then waited for her to play. This time, she felt a sort of connection the moment she laid her palm on the lute. She hesitated and then finally, a long, slow, almost perfect tune poured out. A warm yet chilling breeze flew past Mitsuki, and she just kept playing, unable to stop. She didn't want to stop. She just wanted to play forever and ever, until the strings snapped off. Suddenly, sparks of magic crackled everywhere. They began to form vague shapes, starting on her shoulders. Soon, they had covered almost her entire body with light. Mitsuki realised what was on her. The music had made armor! It was strange though, transparent and scattered.
"Woah! How did you do that?" She asked.
"I-it wasn't me, You did it," he said, "There's quite a few things you can do with it actually, um.... you can make yourself fly," he took the lute and played a quick, high pitched tune. Soon, he was lifted slowly up into the air.
"Are you a bard?" Mitsuki asked him.
"Well....I guess you could say so, yes. But Plague doesn't like me playing much," Tatsuo sighed,"I got fished out of the wilderness too. He just kidnapped me. I don't really know why though. It's definately not to make his crew bigger, even though it is quite small. He says we're going somwhere far away, with a few other people, and I have asked but he just won't tell me where. But- anyway, I have to tell you some rules. Number one is do not upset the crew. I think he already told you that but you seriously do not want to disobey them. These people are a bunch of sly, clever manipulators and you really don't want to know what they're capable of. Number two is if you are in trouble, try not to use your magic too much. It's not seen very well for low ranking members to use magic around here. To be honest with you I am half-dragon, and I sort of have to hide my magic which is mostly breathing fire, as you might have guessed for yourself. And thats about it!" He finally finished talking and walked off to scrub the floor of the ship.