Littlejaw

By: Kaseiko

"I see your future, I see that you will meet a beautiful imperial with a sweet, angelic temperament… she will become the love of your life and your salvation. You will worship the ground her tail touches. It will be true love." Littlejaw sat across from the pearlcatcher fortuneteller as she spoke this prophecy. She fell silent and Littlejaw nearly had to bite his tongue in order to keep himself from bursting into hysterical laughter. He had never heard anything so ridiculous. Him, in love? With a sweet-tempered imperial? Not only was this fortuneteller a charlatan, she wasn't even a good one. Even most fake fortunetellers could do a better job of telling a convincing story. If he needed any further evidence of her ineptitude, her death a mere five minutes later provided it. After all, what kind of fortuneteller failed to predict that she was sitting across from a coatl assassin who would kill her a few minutes from now?

Then again, perhaps his expectations had been too high. Lightjaw had been hired to kill a Lightweaver spy masquerading as a fortuneteller at the Trickmurk Circus. He should not have expected that a spy would have any actual fortunetelling skills. After killing the pearlcatcher, Littlejaw ate some candy corn and went home.

Littlejaw might have forgotten this day completely if it was not for what happened two weeks later. He was given the name of another potential Lightweaver spy. An imperial named Twiggy who, despite her arcane eyes, was said to have actually come from a Light clan. Officially, she was a spirit dancer: a dragon who calmed the spirits of the more hostile shadows with her dances. However, Littlejaw was quite certain this was little more than a hastily-chosen cover for her spy activities. Indeed, when he was first handed the order to investigate Twiggy, Littlejaw expected that he would be able to prove she was a spy within a day and assassinate her within two.

So he was very surprised when the investigation took not one day, not two, but three full months. From morning to evening, Twiggy seemed to play the role of the spirit dancer. She began the day with a sunrise dance, even if she was in a place where the sun was not at all visible. Then, she made her prayers to each of the eleven gods. This was a process that lasted a full hour every morning and bored Littlejaw so thoroughly that he often found himself dozing off. One morning, when Twiggy was particularly longwinded with her prayers, Littlejaw fell asleep, woke up, and discovered that the imperial was still praying.

After prayer time, Twiggy would spend the day wandering from clan to clan and helping them with their problems. Littlejaw had expected her to help with spirit-related problems, but he found that she was willing to help with just about anything. For example, on one occasion, he tailed her as she babysat a nest of five eggs for a mother desperately in need of a break. Twiggy's work would continue into late evening, and only after most dragons went to bed did she do her evening prayer and go to sleep herself. The more Littlejaw watched the imperial, the more convinced he became that she was completely selfless.

One morning, as Twiggy got up to leave after her morning prayer, Littlejaw saw that she had forgotten a ribbon. Littlejaw convinced himself that the reason he went after the ribbon was because he wanted to check whether she had written a message on it for a fellow spy. However, when he retrieved the ribbon, he didn't really check it for messages. Instead, he brought it to his nostrils and inhaled the spirit dancer's fragrance. He became so lost in the moment that he did not even see that Twiggy had returned and was now watching him sniff her ribbon. Littlejaw did not see her until she spoke, "I am glad you have decided to leave the shadows, my shadow."

Littlejaw looked at Twiggy, "Do you know who I am?"

The imperial smiled and twirled her tail before responding, "Of course I do. You are the coatl who loves me so desperately that he has been following me for months."

Littlejaw froze, unsure of what to say to such confidence. And then, the realization hit him. "Yes, that's exactly who I am."