Dusty's lips peeled back. His big square teeth closed over the Peach of Immortality, and juices spurted out all over Flicker's face and chest. The horse dropped the fruit on the ground and started trampling it so hard that he raised a dust storm in the clearing.
"Not so hard! You're mixing dirt into it!" Flicker cried.
The baby horse spirit froze with one foreleg raised over the disgusting mess of peach mush and dirt. Wincing, Flicker scanned the campsite and found a wooden plate and spoon.
"Dusty, can you move that hoof please?"
"Sorry!" The horse leaped backwards as nimbly as a cat, then tossed his mane. "Ahem. Of course I, the Valiant Prince of the Victorious Whirlwind, Vanquisher of Invaders, Inquisitor of Vassals, Vainglorious Subjugator of – "
Without waiting for him to finish, Flicker scraped the mush onto the plate and charged back into the tent. Den was already supporting Floridiana's back to help her sit up. Flicker tipped a spoonful of mush into her mouth. She gasped at the touch of wood on blackened lips, then sighed as the Peach of Immortality numbed the pain. Her throat worked and her body heaved, but she managed to swallow it.
"Not so much!" snapped Den. "You're going to choke her to death!"
Flicker cut the amount to a half-spoonful. This time she didn't hiss when the spoon touched her skin, and she swallowed more smoothly.
Another half-spoonful. Was the color of her lips fading from black to bruise purple?
Another half-spoonful. It was! It definitely was!
"More," she croaked when he paused too long to examine the rash on her cheeks.
"Sorry." He quickly fed her another half-spoonful of mush.
The ugly pinpricks on her face were vanishing too, fading from reddish black to flushed pink. The tumors on her neck! While she swallowed the next mouthful, Flicker craned his head to check. They, too, were shrinking from the size of chicken eggs to crabapples. "It's working! It's really working!"
"Don't get distracted," the dragon scolded.
Flicker fed Floridiana the rest of the peach mush, marveling the entire time. Right before his eyes, it erased the ravages of the Black Death from her body. Her lips turned a healthy, rosy pink. Her cheeks, normally sunken and sallow from poor diet and advancing age, glowed like a twenty-year-old's. The tumors disappeared as if they'd never erupted from her skin. She was supporting her own weight now, and when she lifted a hand to take the spoon and feed herself, her fingertips were back to normal too.
This truly was a miracle cure. No wonder the Queen Mother of the West guarded her orchard so zealously. No wonder only the highest-ranking gods and goddesses had ever laid eyes on a Peach of Mortality, much less tasted one. Remembering the juice that had spurted all over him when Dusty seized the peach half, Flicker stuck his tongue out as far as it would go and licked a dried spatter on his chin.
Sweetness filled his mouth – not thick and heavy like red bean paste, but fresh and pure, like a sip of moonlight after a hard year's work. A cleansing sensation spread from his tongue up into his nose, eyes, and head, and down his throat into his chest, arms, legs, fingers, toes. The ache in his lower back from hunching over his desk all day faded. The stiffness in his writing hand vanished.
"Aaaaah," he sighed, and tipped his head to a side, popping the joints in his neck.
"It's working," said a voice, so choked that for a moment Flicker couldn't tell whether it was the dragon or the human who had spoken.
YOU ARE READING
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
FantasyAfter Piri the nine-tailed fox follows an order from Heaven to destroy a dynasty, she finds herself on trial in Heaven for that very act. Executed by the gods for the "crime," she is cast into the cycle of reincarnation, starting at the very bottom...
