Where Thou Art, That Is Home (Hetalia Fanfic, Part 2)

Chapter 107~!

"Try flapping. Harder. Harder."

But it was no use. I couldn't get far enough off the ground this way! I told Lume so exasperatedly after dropping down that few feet to the ground below.

"That's no excuse! How're you going to fly if you stop trying?" she asked as she descended and perched on top of my head. I guess it was a thing she did with everyone, maybe because she was so small.

"I-I didn't say I was going to stop trying--" I had to stop because a hiccup later I had set a poor, defenseless bush ablaze. Okay, so I really hadn't quite mastered breathing fire yet, but I was getting better, believe it or not! Still, I patted at the bush and flattened it with my huge fireproof body to put out the flames before they could spread.

I'd been doing that for the last twenty minutes, I'm afraid to say.

But I really was improving! Really!

"The way most hatchlings learn to fly is when they go to a cliff and jump off," Lume told me matter-of-factly. I shivered at the thought of hurling myself off a cliff like a crazy person.

"N-No, I-I really d-don't want to do that," I stammered out nervously as I rose from the crushed and blackened shrub.

"Aw, come on, you big pansy," Lume goaded, nudging the side of my head with her nose. "It's no big deal. We'll try with a little cliff!"

~

"This... is not a little cliff," I choked out while staring down with wide, wide eyes at the drop thousands and thousands of feet long.

Okay, maybe not thousand and thousands of feet, but you get my meaning. It wasn't a little cliff! I guessed a hundred, maybe a hundred and thirty feet.

"I'll push you if you don't do it yourself," Lume promised, and I sent a skeptical glance her way.

"Really, like you could push me. That's a bit impossible, eh?" I chuckled, and she head-butted me repeatedly in the shoulder in retaliation. I didn't budge a centimeter, not at all, and rolled my eyes.

"Come on, Matthew!" Lume whined. "I did this as a hatchling, and I'm way smaller than you! You can do this! Don't you want to know how to fly?"

At that point my stay in this dimension couldn't have lasted much longer, and I knew that in the back of my mind. It really didn't matter if I knew how to fly or not. And yet, the idea was almost too good to pass up. If only my stomach could stop doing cartwheels every time I looked down at the ground so far below me...

"Now, spread your wings," Lume instructed while standing on the ground in front of me. She pantomimed opening her wings up and I copied her actions. "Yeah, just like that. Angle them a little bit back, tilt them toward me... Okay, you've got it. Great! Now taking a running leap off the edge of this cliff."

I blanched. 'Mon dieu... H-Here goes nothing!'

Meanwhile, quite a distance away and in a thicket of trees, the knights stirred and began to rise from where they had individually fallen. Though Lume didn't know it yet, the humans had been able to find a way to counter --or at least weaken-- the euphoric properties of her gaseous breath.

Their leader, who went by the name Christian, rose shakily and leaned on his sword, the tip of which was planted into the ground like a walking stick. His armor clattered and clanked against itself when he stood up somewhat straight and tested his hands and fingers. Yes, they felt right again.

'I must get back...' he thought just as unsteadily as his limbs were. 'Aila... Don't bring our baby into the world... without me by your side...'

"Aaaah!" I roared while charging off the cliff with eyes squeezed tightly closed.