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[Beginning of An Accident - Little Women (2022)]

Orchid

"Mother..."

"Are you finally rid of your Civilized lover?"

"No, Mother. I wish to talk to you about it."

"I have already given you three days, Orchid. I will give you one more final chance. Be rid of him now, or I shall rid him for you."

"That is not right. Let me have some freedom, Mother! Can you try to look at the pains of my heart?"

"What pain is there in your heart? All you do is merely wander the forests and mountains, singing to your hearts' contents and taking care of the ferals and the fairies, all of whom give you naught but the highest respect as the demigod of the mountains-"

"Loneliness! I have been lonely all through the years of my life! That is the pain in me that you do not see! Three years and two decades, I had no other anthro besides you to keep me company. And when you were too busy to spend even a sliver of a second for your son, I was left to be all by myself! You do not see that agony. You never did."

"Foolish child, you do not understand."

"No, Mother. It is you who do not understand. You do not see the loneliness that I suffer from. Daily, daily, everyday. I have none to talk to for hours and keep myself company. Lazaro- He is the only one who loves me truly! Please, Mother. If you cannot let me have much in my life, then let me have my lover. That is all that I truly wish."

"No, Waling-Waling. My decision is final. I would rather have you alive."

"Mother, I... I hate you. I have only asked for one thing, and you cannot let me have it."

"And I am sorry once more, for what I shall do."

Lazaro

I came once again, in Dawn's first twilight, ready to hear the good news from him. The entire night before, I couldn't sleep. Anxiety riddled my head sick, and I only truly thought about what could happen to Orchid and me. A part of me feared for the worst, that she would kill me and make sure that Orchid would be more trapped than ever. The thought of it scared me, but I still wanted to be optimistic about it.

I saw him on the cliff, his back turned to me. This time, he was singing. He didn't play the flute that I gave him, but his voice was still as angelic as ever.

"Orchid?"

"Huh?" He turned to look at me, but there was only fear in his eyes. "A... A Civilized? This far in the forest?"

He looked at me with fear. His body tensed as he stood up, ready to flee.

"Wait, Orchid? Are you okay? Why are you like this?"

"H-how do you know my name, Civilized?!"

"What? What do you mean? We've always known each other!" I walked towards him, but he only became more scared as he edged closer to the cliff.

"No, no! Stay away-"

"So this is the Civilized that you loved." A voice interrupted the air. All of a sudden, the skies grew overcast with dark clouds as lightning erupted and thunder rumbled before the rainfall.

A tall feline woman appeared from the trees behind as she went between us, blocking my vision of my lover.

She was like Orchid in so many ways, yet still different. Tall, with a sharper shape of her face in contrast to Orchid's roundness, with ears that stood high.

She had a flower on her head, the same one that rested atop Orchid's, albeit larger. The irises in her eyes were just as pink pink, but carried darkness within.

The Goddess of the Mountain.

"You're Orchid's mother." I held my breath. "What did you do to him?!"

"What I do to my son is none of your business!"

"He is my lover!" I yelled, fury grasped me by the chest and by the heart, threatening to burst forth. "Just as I'm his. I deserve just as much to know what you did to him!"

"M-mother, who is this dragon? What are you talking about? Why does he know my name?" He looked at her, a panicked look on his face as he clutched her arm tight.

"Orchid, it's me, Lazaro!" I called out as I tried to go out of his mother's way, just to look at him. "I'm your lover. She- Your mother took your memories away!"

"Huh?" He turned his head frantically, between the Goddess and me. "Is that true, Mother?"

"Of course not, my son." She bent down to his level, caressing the orchid flower in between his ears.

"Seriously?! No, she's lying! Orchid, believe me. I know that you've been living your entire life in loneliness. I know that in your free time, you like to talk with the ferals and take care of their babies and butterflies!"

"H-how? No, anyone could have known that-"

"Enough!" The Goddess yelled. She grabbed my arm so suddenly, but I pulled away from her. The rage that burned in my stomach grew brighter with every passing second. She shouldn't have taken his memories like that. She shouldn't have tried to stop us!

"Don't touch me!"

"Foolish mortal."

I didn't even get the chance to look at it, to even know that she was coming for me when she grabbed me by the throat and raised me up high.

"M-mother, what are you doing?!" Orchid said.

I choked, trying to breathe amidst her tightening grasp.

"This is what happens to Civilized men who cross the natural boundary. To all who dare touch my son."

"N-no..." My head began to feel dizzy, swaying as her grasp around my neck tightened.

"Mother, stop! Please, do not hurt him!" He cried as he grabbed at her arm and pulled in vain.

It began to rain, a light drizzle from the ever darkening clouds.

The life out of me began to slowly disappear, fogging my mind as my attempts to bring her arm down against my neck slowly weakened by the second.

My eyelids closed, arms losing their strength.

The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was the Goddess looking at Orchid, nothing but rage in her face.

And then I fell down hard to the ground.

I coughed, breath came back into my lungs in thick rounds as a massive wave of relief washed over me.

"Dragon, are you okay?!" Orchid said as he ran over to me. He bent down to his knees and rested my head on his lap.

"Even as you do not know the man anymore, you still love him?" The Goddess in front of me glowered at me, but her expression softened to mere pain when she returned her gaze to Orchid.

""I... I do not understand what is happening. I do not understand anything! But Mother, please have mercy first before you kill. Judge before you deliver. Please, no more hurting."

She scoffed, "Kind as always. Too kind."

"Orchid." I rose out from his legs, felt the ache of my neck where the Goddess held. "She... She took your memories away."

"Better than letting you harm my very own son. Orchid, get off of him, now."

Orchid only shot me a pitying glance his way, before he gently lifted himself off of me and obeyed his mother, standing only a few distances in between us.

"You don't even know me, but here you are already choking me to death." I took a few steps back away from the Goddess, held on to a tree for support. "At least know me. But if you can't even do that, then let me prove to you that I'm worthy enough to love Orchid."

"You think you are worthy enough to have that chance to begin with? You are not satisfied enough with your kin so much that you are willing to cross past the natural boundary of gods and take away my son?"

"No," I retorted. "I love your son that much."

The Goddess frowned before she sighed and rubbed her eyes together. Orchid looked at her with anticipation in his face, but ultimately remained silent altogether.

"All right," she finally said, pointing over to Orchid. "Do you see the flower on Orchid's head?"

"Yeah?"

"Somewhere in the mountains lies a flower just like his. Find even a single one in these mountains, and I shall allow you to love my son."

"Mother." Orchid stepped up. "In all my years and decades in the mountains and its rainforest, never have I found a single flower like mine on my head. You are setting him up for an impossible task."

"No." I stood up, my legs still stumbling, heads still shaking as I faced away from the tree. I put a hand on the neck where the Goddess choked me. "If it takes impossibility to let me love Orchid, then so be it. I'll get it done. "

The Goddess smirked, folding her arms across her chest as she turned her back against me. "You have until the setting sun's last twilight. If you have not seen it until then, you shall be banished from the mountains forever."

I nodded my head.

I have to search the entire forest.

And I have to do it in a single day.

Orchid

Mother trapped me with her magic so high in the southmost cliff. Before my metamorphosis, it would have worked well. There would be nothing for me to do to escape her magic. But she must have forgotten my metamorphosis, or I outgrew her beyond what she expected.

With the powers that grew in me, I channeled the powers in me and escaped her barrier.

She could not have noticed me, for she was gone to be in the place where the orchid flowers were. Or at least, that was what she told me.

I remembered the dragon that came into the city. I do not know him, nor do I know fully why a man such as he was so relevant, only that he was my lover.

Lover. I repeated the word inside my head.

It was a word as unknown as the Civilized dragon who wanted me. All I knew of love was from my own mother. Love, growing where it was meant to die. How could anyone love someone such as I, lest they had something to gain? I was as hideous as a frog that lived in their pond. As shy and disagreeable as a Touch-me-not. There was nothing to love. Only mothers, with their unconditions and purity, can love someone such as me.

Perhaps it was simply deceit. Perhaps he had something to benefit from me, so grand it was worthy enough to forfeit a dragon's life

Perhaps he was simply a fool. Mistook ugliness for beauty. Disagreeableness for amiability. Whatever it was, I needed to know. I needed to see the dragon, to find the reason why he loved me so.

Time passed, and I found him passing by the riverbank, walking only by the moon as the river glittered in its silver light. He had a sour expression stuck to his face, marching forward with the duty Mother gave him.

"Dragon." I whispered, careful not to disturb the forest in its rest.

"Orchid!" He ran towards me, arms forward as if to embrace.

But I backed off from him, afraid to touch Civilized men such as he.

The wave of relief that he had a moment ago all but disappeared to a saddened frown, arms dropping down. "You... really don't remember?"

"Dragon," I repeated again. "What is your name?"

"Lazaro. Lazaro Domingo. Did you really forget all the things we did together?"

"I do not understand."

"Our long hours of conversation together. When you showed me the flower field and I gave you flowers every day! And the flute you have? It was me who gave it to you!"

"Flute?" My brows furrowed. "I do, but... It was something I always had. You never gave it to me."

"I did. And... maybe if you grab my hand," he held out his open palm to me, "maybe you'll remember."

I did not know why, but I believed him. Through some secrets made hidden to me, or some force beyond me, I believed him. As I held his hand, he whispered so gently to my ear, "We once danced in the mansion together."

I believed him. He moved, and my body knew where to go. He danced and stepped, and my body foretold me the future.

As the river sang of a time so long gone, and as the crickets whispered of mysteries, I felt something in my chest.

A cavity in my heart, one that I never knew existed, began to sing to me of a feeling oh so familiar. As if...

"I knew you," I mumbled. "Once upon a dream."

"It wasn't a dream." Our dance ended, his hands on my back as I faced the man that called me his lover.

I believed him. He slowly leaned in forward, and I closed my eyes.

He kissed me, and when his lips left there was all but a trace of saliva to mark our love together.

I no longer believed. I knew.

I knew him to be my lover.

"Lazaro."

"Orchid." He grinned, running a hand over the flower on my head. "I love you."

Memories. So many memories blossomed in my mind in that single kiss. The barrier that Mother put unto my mind dissipated to nothing as I tasted Lazaro's tongue on mine. His taste... It was the most familiar thing in the world.

"You are... I love you too." I caressed the side of his face, and we kissed even more. I felt the claws of his body pull to me harder. He was no longer from a dream. He came from the memories he brought upon me, the love that we both did together.

Lust. The one feeling that appeared plenty in all the times we saw each other. This... This time was different. It was unlike anything I ever felt before.

Lust. Was that its name?

He did not dare to let me go in his grasp, and I did not dare to release him from mine.

When our kisses ceased, I pushed him until his back landed on a tree. And I kissed him again.

My mind and body were no longer mine, strung only by the very man in front of me.

And he gave me a look. A look that told me he was strung along, just as much by his own heart.

Was it permission? Drive? A desire so drunk from the moment's moonlight that sparked the lust in his eyes?

I loved the strength of his hand when he held my hips.

I loved the sweat and soil that permeated from his body when our gazes locked for the thousandth time.

I loved the full shape of his strong, heavy body when he took off all that barred me in our joining together.

I loved how his head raised high and huffed when my hands explored his body. No longer in play, neither in lust, but in something more.

I loved how our bodies clashed together, fueled by holy passion. Our legs and arms soon intertwined, like the stars that formed the constellations. Scale collided with fur. My arboreal smell of petrichor, joining with his sweat and soil.

I belonged to him, he belonged to me.

He moaned out my name, grasped me tighter to him. Blood rushed all through my body, followed by the pitter and patter of my heart.

Long was I familiar of his body. But not this way, never this way. This was new, for I stroked his body with such lust. And he responded with a close of his eyes, arch of his back, and begs that slipped past his maw.

Until our love peaked to a thing I never imagined before.

We laid there in the grasses, nothing and no one but us. The moonlight colored him with a tint of silver. My muscles all ached as he embraced me still. I gave him one more kiss.

"I love you." How many times did we say that to each other? A ten? A hundred? Perhaps not more than a thousand in the times that passed between us. But I knew that a thousand of that phrase was not needed for me to know how much it meant.

"My mother... Lazaro, have you found the flower yet?" I sat up from the grass, pulled away from his embrace as I remembered his trial.

"No, not yet." He shook his head. "Do you have an idea how we can find that flower on your head?"

I paused for a second, until I leaned my body close to him and rested my head on his chest. "Feel it, know it."

And he obeyed. He put a hand on the flower on my head, caressed it, smelled it.

"It's lovely. But how's this going to help me?"

"What does it remind you of?"

His head flinched in the realization. "Of mountains and sunlight."

I grinned as I looked up to the sky, to the moon and its stars. "I may not have seen the flowers that Mother hid herself, but all I know is that they grow where mountains meet the setting sun."

"You mean..."

"Yes." I smiled, pointed a finger over to the east mountain. "It could be over there."

"Oh, Orchid!" He pulled me to a tight hug, and I felt the air leave out of my body. "You're amazing!"

"Thank you." Once he eased his grasp on me, I stood up and waved him goodbye. "I must go now. If Mother knows that I left to love you, she will be angry."

One more kiss. One more love to say. I did enough. Now it was all up to my lover.