Even using Ray Wing, Lina had never moved so fast in her life. She seemed almost to be flying over the ground, and yet she saw everything she was passing and moved almost silently, lightning-fast reflexes allowing her to step over obstacles which might have betrayed her. She could hear birds taking off from the tree-limbs and mice scurrying underground, but she was able to distinguish from these the soft rustle that was Zel up ahead of her.
She realised after a moment that she could smell him too. A scent that was stone and earth and lightning and male and just somehow ZEL and no one else. She could see him now, through the trees, and when he swerved to avoid a tree root, she pounced.
"Ha! Gotcha!" she exclaimed as they rolled across the ground, then came to a stop with her sitting on his chest, "Now you're gonna PAY for messing up my hair!" She grabbed his long bangs and, using all the new strength she possessed, she bent them up until they resembled horns.
"Ha HA!" she laughed triumphantly.
"Oh, so you think you've won, do you?" Zelgadis said with a smirk on his face, "I beg to differ!" He reached up and began lightly running his fingers over the pebbles on her arms.
"What are you doing Zel, that TICKLES!" Lina started giggling. Zel's smirk widened and he moved his tickling to those pebbles he could feel around her waist.
"Zel! Stop it! That REALLY tickles!" she giggled, "Stop it! ZEL!" Lina squealed with mirth as Zelgadis flipped her over onto her back and tickled her into submission.
"Okay! Okay! I admit it! You won! Just please, PLEASE stop!" Lina gasped.
Zel acquiesced and stopped tickling, but he didn't move his hands from her waist. They were both panting slightly, and Zelgadis had a triumphant smile on his face. He was too taken up by the thrill of their little game to notice just how indecent the pair of them looked, or he probably would have been horribly embarrassed.
How did he know? How did he know I would be so ticklish? Lina wondered. She found she could sense his triumph, and the lack of surprise told her that he had known the effect he would cause. Of COURSE! it came to her, He knows a lot more about this chemiric body than I do, being a chimera himself, so obviously he learned it from experience. That being so...
Zelgadis had only a brief moment to register the crafty look on Lina's face before she started to tickle him back, ruthlessly searching out the most ticklish little pebbles to send Zel into paroxysms of giggles. He started to tickle her again too, and the two of them rolled across the forest floor giggling and squealing like a pair of five-year-olds at play. The play suddenly took a turn for the adult, however, when their laughing lips met in a kiss.
Impossible to know who initiated, but both were shocked into stillness at the realisation that there was a pair of lips touching their own in a loving caress.
"Lina, I..."
Lina put a finger across Zel's lips, not letting him speak the apology she knew was coming.
"Zel, it's okay. It's more than okay, because I've been dreaming of this moment for so long now...I love you, Zelgadis Greywords." she said and captured his head to bring his mouth down to kiss her own again.
"I love you too." he whispered just before his lips met hers.
With his attention focussed more fully on Lina than he'd ever allowed himself before, Zel noticed a couple of things. First, he noticed her scent. Of course, he had known it before, thank you, one doesn't live as a chimera, even if one hated it, and completely ignore all the new sensory acuteness, but the thing he noticed was that it had changed slightly. In addition to the scent of autumn leaves and ashes she had always seemed to carry with her, the scent which said "Lina" now had also a hint of sakura blossoms and freshly turned sod. A more detailed and complex scent, and something about it tickled the back of his mind, but he didn't have the concentration to do more than associate this new scent with the one he loved. The second thing he noticed, or thought he did, was that he could feel Lina's emotions toward him echoing through his own heart.
His thoughts, what there were of them anyway, were interrupted by someone clearing their throat overhead.
Wait a second...overhead? Zel thought. "Xellos." he growled, "What do you want?"
"Been a busy boy, ne, Zel-kun?" Xellos grinned, "Lina-chan, so good to see you again! How are you?"
"How do I LOOK!" Lina snarled at him as Zelgadis backed off and helped her to her feet.
"My my, that's a new look for you!" Xellos smirked at the anger, frustration and hurt she was feeling, "However did THAT happen?"
Zel blinked for a second. He had been right! He COULD feel Lina's emotions. And what she was feeling right now was anger and hurt...and loneliness, for some reason. Well, I can remedy that. he thought to himself and laid a possessive arm across Lina's shoulders, trying to let her know he was there for her through anything and everything.
Lina settled in against his side and wrapped her arm around his waist, and the two of them glared identical glares up at Xellos.
"How this happened is none of your business, Mazoku," Lina said firmly, "and I highly recommend you get out of here now, before I Dragon Slave your but out of existence."
"Yare yare, Lina-chan, such a temper!" he scolded, wagging his finger, but he did leave.
At least for the moment. he told himself, How could Lina have wanted THAT at Ura no Shinden?
Xellos frowned slightly. This had surprised him, and he didn't much like being surprised.