Divinitas

034 - Trials and Tribulations

~ * ~

Draco considered himself to be a composed and calm person, who dealt well with almost any situation and could face trials head on without becoming unnecessary stressed or impassioned over it.

Waking up to the sound of screaming and yelling did not fit into the ‘almost any situation’ category.

One sapphire eye opened, looking through the parting in his curtains to ascertain the cause of the riot so early on a Sunday morning. The eye shut again, an instant headache beginning to form. This was not what he needed first thing in the morning.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!” Phoenix’s enraged off voice exclaimed, flailing his arms and legs around in a desperate attempt to dislodge Aether who had apparently snuck into their room and was now groping the poor boy.

“Since you decided against staying in my room, I’ve decided to move into your’s,” Aether’s perfectly reasonable voice replied, snaking his arms more tightly around Phoenix’s bare upper body.

” Ph” Phoenix all but wailed, and thrashed about even harder.

Draco rolled over, pulling the covers over his head. This was just what he needed, especially with end of semester exams right around the corner…



~ * ~

Stern sapphire eyes looked at each of the two pairs of eyes before him (well, in Aether’s case, one eye). Phoenix and Aether were seated at the table, whilst Draco stood on the opposite side, looking threatening.

“Firstly, Aether and Phoenix may not sleep in the same bed in this room. Phoenix will sleep in his original bed, and Aether will slin Gin Gryps’.

“Secondly, Aether may not disturb Phoenix whilst he is studying. So any time after dinner and until I say so, Aether may only talk to Phoenix and vice versa if it is relatin sch school work.

“Thirdly both of you may not attempt to do each other bodily harm. No hitting, no stabbing, etc. At least, I do not want to see it, or even hear it. Understood?” The raven haired boy paused and took a deep brea“The“These are the conditions if both of you insist on staying here. To break any of them means I will personally expel Aether from this room, and lock Phoenix up in the bathroom with nothing but text books, is that understood?”

Aether gave an elegant sigh whilst Phoenix glared daggers into the older boy’s side. “Draco, you’re taking away all my fun…”

“I do not care,” Draco answered, crossing his arms over his chest. “Either abide by these rules, or do not stay in this dorm room, Aether.”

“Very well,” Aether agreed finally, pushing back his chair and standing up. He held out his slender hand towards Draco. “It’s a pleasure to share the same room as you, Draco.”

The sapphire eyed boy shook the ofd had hand despite his better judgment, and then turned to give Phoenix a ‘you better behave’ look before getting back to his Sunday routine. Which, by the way, was now completely off track, no thanks to his having to spend a better part of an hour to lay down a truce between Phoenix and Aether. Really, it had been better when Aether just dragged the younger boy off and did whatever sick and twisted things it was they did. At least then Draco had the pleasure of some peace and quiet.



~ * ~

In a person’s life time, one rarely has the time to simply lay back in the grass and stare up into the ever changing blue and white sky. It was a luxury reserved for young children and those who were carefree and loved being simply alive.

That, or they were thrown off their horse.

Thursday morning. Equestrian Skills class. Evil demon horse. Hate Solar Flare. Must kill evil demon horse.

“It would be wise if you were to reinar Far Flare in when you ride past Venus’ paddock,” Aether’s shadow fell over Phoenix’s form, his smile wide and amused. “You know of his attraction to my filly…” The older boy reached down and pulled Phoenix up, brushing dirt and grass off his riding habit. Of course, his hands wandered unnecessarily over certain parts of Phoenix’s body, and lingered there even when Phoenix was spotless.

The younger boy glared and snatched away Aether’s hands, holding them tightly by his wrists. “What are you doing here?”

Aether leaned forward, smiling. “To check up on my fillyoenioenix…” he said softly in a seductive tone. “And of course, to save my Prince from his run away horse…” In a swift movement of his wrist, Aether twisted free of Phoenix’s grasp and clasped the younger boy’s hand in his own. He brought it up slowly to his lips and placed a chaste kiss on his palm, his tongue darting out to lick the sensitive skin.

A mixture of shock and slight revolution flashed across Phoenix’s face has he struggled to free his hand, yet almost as soon as the conflict began, it was dropped. “You are such a hentai,” Phoenix scolded in a slightly rough voice, and after a seconds hesitation, leaned down and kissed Aether lightly on the lips just as the older boy lifted his head.

Phoenix’s nerves only held out for a second, and the boy quickly pulled away, a deep blush staining his cheeks. But that second was long enough for Aether to feel the hidden meaning behind Phoenix’s kiss, and it made the older boy smile.

The sound of galloping hooves interrupted the somewhat awkward moment, and caused Phoenix to scramble backwards as Casi’s mare almost trampled him. Chima’s chestnut gelding skidded up beside her a moment later, both riding bareback as Phoenix had been before he had fallen off.

“You were making out with Phoenix again, weren’t you?!” Casi demanded from astride her mount, pointing an accusing finger at Aether. “In the middle of the paddocks too! Have you no shame?”

Aether gave a careless shrug, turning his attention to Chima who was idly playing with his horse’s mane. “Chima, would you please tell Solar Flare to stop swooning over Venus and to come here? If it’s not too much trouble, I would like you to turn him out in his paddock as well. I believe your instructor has an announcement to make before class ends, and we all know how pathetic my Phoenix is when it comes to handling his horse.”

The younger boy grinned. “Sure, no problem!” Chima replied, and called out to the black stallion standing outside of Venus’s paddock. The horse pricked his ears, looking at Chima as if sizing him up. Finally Solar Flare tore himself away from Venus and walked grudging towards the group.

“Come on,” Aether said once Chima and Casi had left to turn the three horses out into their paddocks. He took Phoenix by the hand and led the boy back towards the stables when Phoenix could only stare after Chima and Solar Flare. It wasn’t until they arrived back at the stables that Phoenix realised he was holding Aether’s hand and quicklrkedrked it back, wiping his palm on his breeches as if to rid himself of Aether cooties.

The majority of the class had already gathered in the are arena, sitting or leaning on the fence. Phoenix made his way over to Draco, climbing onto the fence and sitting next to where the raven haired boy stood with his back resting against the painted wood.

“Know what this is about?” Phoenix asked, scowling as Aether leaned casually back on the fence, right beside Phoenix so his shoulder was pressed up against Phoenix’s thigh.

“Exams,” Draco answered gravely, eyes never leaving their instructor who was standing patiently in the middle of the arena, waiting for the late comers.

Phoenix made a face. More studying. Just want he needed… He raked his fingers absentmindedly through Aether’s golden locks. Aether had such pretty hair. It looked like spun gold in the sunlight, random strands glittering as the breeze moved them to catch the light.

“Phoenix…” Aether’s voice said softly.

“Hmmm?” the mesmerised boy answered, running his fingers through the silky strands again.

“As much as I enjoy your attention… It would probably benefit you to pay more attention to the announcements next time…” the older boy said, reaching up and catching hold of Phoenix’s roaming hand, depositing an information sheet in it. Violet eye looked up at absentminded crimson ones, smiling with amusement and blooming contentment. “The announcement’s over, Phoenix,” he clarified, pulling the younger boy down off the fence.

The dazed boy blinked, shaking his head slightly and looking around. The other students were making their way back up to the castle. Only their little group was left, with Draco looking more than a little worried and staring at the piece of paper they were all given. What had he been doing just now…?

“Really, Draco, it’s not the end of the world,” Ari drawled, rolling his eyes and pushing himself off the fence. “Besides, I think it would be a most interesting experience. I know I will use it to bond with my brother here,” he smirked, throwing Gryps an evil look.

“Don’t you think!” Chima agreed, bouncing up and down, grinning. “I can’t wait!” Yuki suddenly bounded up to the young boy, having extracted himself from the bushes where he was hiding, and jumped up into the boy’s arms. “Yuki! We get to go camping! Yay! Yay!” Chima exclaimed, swinging the young wolf around in wide circles.

“No! It’s not fair!” Casi cried, bawling her eyes out. “I want to go with you guys too! Not fair, only allowing same sexed groups! It’s not as if you guys don’t jump each other anyway!” she wailed, stomping her foot.

Phoenix heard none of this though. All he could do was stare at his hand. His horrible treacherous hand. His hand that had felt up Aether’s hair…

“To be held on the third last Friday and weekend before the semester break in groups of four to six. A three day, two night horseback camping trip. To test our survival skills and horsemanship…” Draco summarized in a small voice. “We need to reach a certain point and get our names marked off and then return to the school… You… You can’t study for something like this!” he whispered, clutching the paper so tightly he crumpled it.

“Must! Cut! It! Off!” Phoenix suddenly exclaimed and sprinted away from the group, running with his right hand as far away from his body as possible all the way back up to the castle.

No one in the group paid theane ane boy any attention.

“It says we have to find a senior to take our group…” Draco continued, forcing himself to read the details of the Equestrian Skills exam. “Who are we going to find to take us?” the sapphire eyed boy stressed.

Aether cleared his throat.

“Perhaps we could ask Ares? He’s a senior, and he seems fond of Phoenix, always willing to help out…” Draco continued, running candidates through his mind. He was quite oblivious to Casi sobbing at his feet and Chima still swinging Yuki round and round in circles. Ari had long ago lost interest in the details of the exam, and was in the process of dragging Gryps back up to their room.

The Child of Soul cleared his throat again, louder this time.

“No… He would be too busy organising the Trials for Metamorphosis. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to spend three days with us in the wilderness…”

Snapping, Aether snatched the information sheet from Draco’s hand, tossing it aside. “I would be delighted to take your group, Draco,” Aether said forcefully with a strained smile, hand itching to grab Draco’s shirt and shake some common sense into him.

Draco stared at Aether for a long moment before fully processing the details of Aether’s words. “Oh. Thankyou, Aether. I had forgotten about you being a senior,” he admitted with a smile. “Well then, since that’s settled, let’s go and have lunch, shall we? I believe we can work out a study plan for this exam once we’re full.”

Really, this was the person who hadn hin his tactical advisor in his past life? No wonder they had fallen…



~ * ~

People often said that the darkest hour of the day was just before first light. The first light was birth of the sun’s daily cycle, symbolic of a new beginning. Was there any meaning then, to that saying? The darkest hour falls before when the light of hope shall appear.

Dark crimson eyes opened upon the darkness before dawn, staring up at the still present stars through the narrow window. The past weeks had flown by. Their normality… Was both soothing to Phoenix’s soul and uncomfortable at the same time. He hadn’t spent it contemplating about everything that had happened since his arrival here. It had been all too easy for him to cast aside the demons of the past for the present delights and comforts.

All he had been occupied with was studying and fending off Aether’s blatant advances in public. Everyone else had also been behaving relatively normally…

It was hard for him to imagine that things had ever been different. Or more correctly, he didn’t want to remember the reality which had been, preferring to drown himself in this comfortable life.

Phoenix smirked to himself in the darkness. Of course he knew it was foolish of him to do so. To turn a blind eye on the wheels turning in the darkness. Except. He wanted to, didn’t he.

Subconsciously his fingers tightened around Aether’s threaded through his own, feeling the warmth of Aether’s flesh seep into his own. The older boy was spooned up against his back, arm around Phoenix’s waist in a possessive embrace.

He didn’t want to let go of this… If… If he examined all that had passed and all that he had been told, and if he delved into his childhood past… He would have to reject this, wouldn’t he? Aether… The one who held him so protectively. The one who realised his Wish.

The sound of movement from the other side of the room drew Phoenix out of his musings. This was the long awaited Friday. The third last Friday before the semester break, and the Friday that marked the beginning of their Equestrian Skills exam.

To say Draco had been stressed over it was an understatement, no matter how hard the seventeen year old had tried to hide his concern under a mask of outer calm and composure. He had researched and gone over the instructions so many times that even Chima, the one who had been most excited over it, avoided Draco whenever he sought the younger boy out to go over it with him. At least, on a positive note, their group would be well prepared.

Slipping out from Aether’s embrace (the older boy had broken Draco’s first rule on the first night, claiming he had ‘sleepwalked’ over to Phoenix’s bed in the middle of the night), Phoenix swung his legs off the bed and stood up, stretching. It was down right evil, starting the exam at six in the morning, thus making them get up at four-thirty. But injustices in the education system were a given in life, and complaining about them was useless. Better just to make the best of it and use the bathroom before Chima woke up and splashed water all over the floor.

“Draco…” Aether’s husky sleep ridden voice spoke up from Phoenix’s bed. “If you stress anymore, your hair is going to fall out… And I’ve always liked your long hair. It would be a real pity to see you loose it,” the Child of Soul observed, watching Draco bustle about the room, checking and re-checking their luggage.

“If the rest of you took a little more responsibility, I wouldn’t have to stress, now would I?” Draco replied almost haughtily, putting the last the their backpacks and camping gear on the table. He walked over to Chima and shook the young boy awake. Yuki growled at him, not at all happy to have been woken up from his comfortable position on the end of Chima’s bed. The young wolf had grown drastically in the past weeks, and was almost as tall as Chima now if he stood on his hind legs. So it was justified that Draco backed off immediately.

It took the four boys and Yuki an hour before they left the comfort of their dorm room and trudge down to the stables. Pale light was only just filtering into the sky, and everything looked washed and devoid of colour. Winter had settled in, and the wind was icy so early in the morning. It was all Phoenix could do to thank whoever it was up above that they could wear whatever they wanted for this, and not that skimpy excuse for a winter Metamorphosis uniform.

The winter season also meant the coming of Christmas… It would be the first Christmas that he could remember in which he wouldn’t be spending in the orphanage. A pale smile flickered on Phoenix’s lips as he tacked up Solar Flare in his stall. It would be among friends… And someone who… was obsessed with him. The boy smirked, wrapping bandages around the Solar Flare’s long black legs. There was still no way in the world he was going to say ‘I love you’ to Aether. After all, he hadn’t said it to him… Besides, he was not a sappy mushy fluffy lovey-dovey person.

The others had already assembled in the arena when Phoenix led his black stallion out, fully tacked up and packed with his luggage. He had to do a double take when he saw Gryps and Ari though. Ari had braided his hair for convince, and both their dark grey horses looked exactly the same to Phoenix’s untrained eyes. Gryps however, had procured from somewhere name tags, and was wearing his in plain sight, proclaiming ‘I am Gryps’. For Ari’s, it read ‘I’m the Evil One.’

Casi was still bawling her eyes out over the unfairness of the rules, and it was only the two girlfriends she had on either side of her that held her up from sobbing pathetically on the ground.

“Look what you’ve reduced our Casi to!” the girl on the right accused of Draco, glaring at him. “She use to be so genki, and now look at her!”

“Yeah! And it’s all you fault for kicking her out of your group, you meanie!” the girl on the left added, blowing a raspberry at Draco to empathize her point.

Poor Draco was at a loss for words.

“Phoenix!” Aether called out to the younger boy, gesturing for him to go over and meet his mount. Since Venus was in foal, the amethyst eyed boy had chosen another Arab mare, this time of the purest white with silver mane and tail. “She’s a beauty, don’t you think?” the older boy asked, stroking the horse’s neck lovingly. “Her name is Shiro Tsuki, meaning White Moon.”

“That’s wrong!” Casi cried out in between sobs. “There’s no such thing as a white horse unless it’s an albino! It’s grey, it’s grey!”

Of course, Phoenix was too busy being jealous of Shiro Tsuki to hear Casi’s outraged cry. “Why do you always ride pretty fillies or mares…” the boy seethed, glaring at Aether’s hand that was still petting his horse.

“Maybe because the only male he wants between his legs is you,” ‘I’m the Evil One’ called out, grinning, for lack of a better word, evilly.

“Kill! You!” Phoenix lunged at the older twin, only to be choked back as Aether grabbed the collar of his top.

The older boy’s arm snaked around Phoenix’s middle, pulling him back against his taller body. “Why are you so upset, Phoenix...?” Aether asked with a sly smile, hand slipping under the front of Phoenix\'s shirt. “It’s perfectly true, what Ari said...”

Phoenix gave Aether a mortified look and struggled to disentangle himself from Aether’s lecherous hands.

Casi looked on with large tearing aqua eyes, sniffling indignantly. It really, really wasn’t fair. The whole purpose of splitting the boys and girls up was so they didn’t engage in any... amorous activities. And here was Aether feeling Phoenix up, and no doubt Ari had his evil designs on Gryps as soon as he could get him alone somewhere.

Something, however, was nagging her. More than just the injustice of the whole system. Watching Aether lay his hands all over her Little Phoenix... She blinked, realization dawning on her. Aether was going with them. Aether would be leading their group for the three day two night trip.

Before anyone knew what had happened, Casi had thrown the two boys apart and dragged Aether into the nearest stall, slamming shut both the top and bottom halves of the door.

“Oh my god, she’s going to rape him!” one of the other students exclaimed, and all the perverts in the class made to dash over to the stables. Either by coincidence or misfortune, the instructor chose that moment to appear and call order to the class.

“I wonder if I should be worried or happy,” Phoenix pondered, staring at where Casi and Aether had disappeared to. In the end, he just shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention to their instructor. Strange how he could get jealous over a horse but not over Casi...



~ * ~

Amethyst gaze stared dully at the cobwebs clinging to the corner of the wooden roof, devoid of movement and long abandoned by its creator. Aether’s arms were crossed loosely across his chest, his body carelessly leaning against the back wall of the empty stall. Everything about him excluded a reckless sense of abandonment.

Fierce aqua eyes glared at the uncaring boy before her. Why. Why didn’t he care? He knew, and he didn\'t care!

“I want to be with him. That is why I do not care,” Aether said finally, eye still focused on the meaningless strands of silk that draped down from the wooden rafters. “I also trust in Chimaera’s ability to return us within three days,” he added when Casi opened her mouth to protest. The golden haired boy turned and fixed his one eyed gaze on the younger girl. “I’m not your responsibility, Casimir. Stop concerning yourself over me.”

Bitterness tainted Casi’s voice when she spoke. “I just don’t understand... How you can risk everything just to spend a mere three days with him. Aether, he’s not going to run away from you! But if you go, and if you stay away too long, you risk losing everything!” she burst out, the emotion thick in her voice.

A pale smile appeared over Aether’s lips. “You could never understand…”

“Aether! You have waited thousands of years for this! You know of your condition. That is why you have waited and let Genesis gain the strength to bring them here, because I damn well know you would have searched the world high and low for Phoenix were you not confined here! And now… Now you’re saying it doesn’t matter if you lose what little remains of your powers, just so you can spend these three days with him!” Casi was on the verge of hysterics, small delicate hands bunched up into hard fists.

“Idiot…” Aether breathed, the word lacking any venom but rather taking on a reassuring quality. “Of course I will not be so stupid as to forfeit what remains of my immortality. I will not throw all of this away into the hands of mortal death, Casimir. I will never allow such a trifle thing to tear us apart. I will be back within three days. There is nothing to be concerned about.”

Casi\'s large aqua eyes dropped down to the floor, unable to hold Aether\'s gaze any longer. “I can’t help it... I don\'t want to be the only one left... I don’t have your condition. I can’t loose this cursed immortality whilst you can.”

“I know. But I told you just now, didn’t I? I will not allow death to tear us apart.” There was a confident smile as Aether pushed himself off the wall and walked past the younger girl, brushing her shoulder with his hand as he did so. “Don’t worry, Casimir. Everything will be fine. You’ll see. Try to have fun this weekend. I know I will,” he added with a wink and opened the stall door, letting the dawn light pour into the darkness.

~ * ~

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