The next morning felt harshly light compared to the soft, quiet darkness of the night before.
Janus was woken by the panting yelps and chirps of Disquiet running around the clearing, rolling under mossy logs and bush-crowded rocks. The prince stretched, blinking in the early-morning sunlight and squinting at the clearing where he had fallen asleep the night before.
He felt... damp. When he glanced down, he saw that his clothes were pretty much soaked, though the side he had pressed against a rock to sleep was still warm and mostly dry. Even his hair was wet, he noticed with a small twinge of annoyance.
Looking around, he realized it had rained the night before-- the quiet scent of thunderstorms was in the air, and the entire forest was dripping with glittering raindrops, the last remnants of the storm collecting in crystal puddles. Lying near the line of trees had its perks, as the tree's leaves had mostly sheltered him from the worst of the rain.
He groaned, sleepily sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Disi, c' mere," he called to the dragon.
Flapping his wings in excitement once more and finally fluffing them back, Disi bounded towards Janus to give the prince little licks all around his face and neck. Janus was pushed back onto the ground, startled laughter coming out of his mouth as Disi flung his wings around Janus in an overexcited hug.
"Buenos dias, Janus," Disi barked happily. "Como estas? Tengo hambre, y tu?" He tilted his head, his ruff flared in happiness.
Janus rolled over, sleepily pushing the dragon off of him. "I have no idea what you just said," he mumbled, chuckling. He sat back up, pulling at his shirt and readjusting his sleeves, which had rolled up in the night. "You snored again, by the way."
Disi's tongue lolled out of his mouth as he hovered in midair, waiting for Janus to stand up. "Y donde esta?" he asked. "No lo se." He wrinkled his snout, the silvery-purple scales shimmering like layered amethysts in the dawn light.
Guessing what Disquiet had asked, Janus shook his head. "I have no clue where we are, sorry," he shrugged. "Where could the campsite be?" He glanced over at the dragon, who was now trying to dig up a pale moonflower and eat it.
They often communicated like this, understanding fragments and bare sentences of each other's language. Mostly they just talked through glances and gestures and could understand each other well through this, being trapped in a tower together for years. Janus had often wished that there was a language translator book in the tower with him, but no matter how often he had asked for one, his pleas had never been answered.
Disi shook himself out and smiled, baring his fangs at Janus, who grinned in response. "Well, we'd better find our way back, right?" Janus offered, patting his shoulders. Disi nodded, looping onto Janus's neck and curling around his shoulders, his claws gently poking into Janus's shirt.
"Do you see any... landmarks?" Janus asked cautiously, glancing around, and squinting in the sunlight. A small knot of anxiety had begun to form in his stomach, seeing as even though being lost was a new and exciting experience, he also knew that he was very far away from any of his friends, who he did enjoy being around.
He also did not want to be stuck in a forest for the rest of his days. He knew this was barely better than being stuck in the tower, where at least he could send letters to his family and always have something to eat.
The clearing looked much different in the sunlight, Janus noted. The sunflowers had bloomed, full golden-yellow petals bursting with vivid color facing the rising sun. Soft white clouds rolled across the cornflower-blue sky and even the grass looked sunnier in the daylight.
Janus smiled at the clearing. "If I find out where I came from, I can certainly go back through that path," he murmured, rubbing at his eyes with a small yawn and looking around, his gaze drifting from tree to tree. They seemed to stretch their spiraling, silhouetted branches far into the sky, nearly brushing the top of the stretches of rolling blue.
Disi chirped and fluffed up his wings, mimicking Janus's yawn and exposing long, sharp front teeth. "Hey, can you climb up a tree and look around for smoke or something?" Janus asked the small dragon, looking at him.
"Que?" Disi asked, blinking at the prince with wide eyes. Sighing, Janus rolled his eyes and pointed to the tree, then to the dragon, then mimed climbing up the tree.
"Understand now?" Janus joked, giving Disi a nudge with his shoulder. "Or do I have to throw you? I will not hesitate, you do understand," he continued, poking Disi's snout and wrinkling up his nose in a smile.
Cocking his head, a look of understanding soon crossed Disi's snout. He nodded, his forked tongue slipping out between his teeth and tasting the air. "Sí, sí." Disi scampered off of Janus's shoulder, his wings unfolding to help him balance as he landed on the dew-wet grass. He jumped up onto a tree and dug his claws into the bark, jumping up each branch at a time like the tree was a glorified staircase.
Soon he reached the top, curling his tail around a rain-slick branch and spreading his wings to balance on the slippery wood. He glittered in the sunlight like a shiny diamond, his wings drawn back and his crystal claws glowing like mirrors in the dappled sunrise. With the colors of the rising sun glancing off of him, he looked like a fiery jewel, majestically posed with his mouth open and his eyes wide.
Well, he looked majestic until he almost fell off the top of the tree.
With a small yelp, Disi slipped off of the tree branch he had been clinging to and flapped his wings in distress, eventually clambering back to his perch. He purred in relief and nearly melted onto the branch, clutching it and wrapping his tail and wings all the way around the damp wood.
"Well?" Janus shouted from below, cupping his hands around his mouth. A fond smile was on his face as he watched the dragon squawk indignantly at him, thwacking his tail against the branch several times. The prince laughed and put his hands on his hips. "Have you found the wagon yet?"
Disi stared down at Janus for a while, thinking, then jumped down a few branches and launched himself off the tree. Janus shrieked, laughing as Disi did several loops and dives in the air, finally crash-landing right onto his friend, who caught him best he could. The two lay on the ground for a while, staring up at the clouds.
"So did you find anything?" Janus asked, sitting up with some difficulty (there was a dragon on his chest, after all) and rubbing the back of his head.
The dragon nodded quickly, leaping to his feet and running in long loops all around Janus's legs. "Woah," Janus laughed, reaching down to scoop Disi into his arms. Disi gave Janus a lick on his cheek and Janus yelped in surprise. "Hey!"
Disi shook himself out and settled around Janus's shoulders, nodding his snout towards a patch of woods. Janus squinted into the bright light of day and grinned back at Disi, giving him a small scratch behind his ears. "Gracias," he said to Disi, one of the few words he had learned all those years in the tower-- "Thank you."
"De nada," Disi chirped in reply, spreading his sparkling wings and wrapping them around Janus in a warm hug. "Ahora vamos, Jan!" He thwacked his tail on Janus's shoulder and the prince rolled his eyes, nodding.
"Alright, alright," he teased, running over to the side of the clearing Disi had motioned to and pushing aside the shrubbery in the way.
Emerald vines draped languidly off of thick tree branches and Janus had to shove them away and quickly duck to avoid getting a faceful of prickly fern leaves. Large tree trunks made up a dark maze for Janus to walk through and moss climbed up boulders and tree roots, dew-wet grass sprouting in patches here and there. He could only see a pinprick of blue sky when he looked up, and strange rustling noises came from everywhere he wasn't looking.
As it happened, walking out of a forest was much more difficult than walking into a forest-- you had a tendency to get much more lost that way.
So after fifteen minutes of zero luck and aching legs, Janus slumped down next to a large tree trunk, fitting right between two large tree roots. The moss underneath him was soft like a strange blanket and made for a somewhat comfortable pillow as Janus stretched out his arms and legs, trying to regain feeling in his limbs.
Disi glanced down at Janus with wide, unimpressed eyes. "Es un pendejo casado? Ay, vamonos, vamonos," he chirruped, flapping his wings impatiently. He sighed, and a small puff of cold air made Janus shiver.
"Hey, stop," Janus complained, standing up from where he had sat down and trying to brush the cold feeling off of his shoulder. "It is summer, it should not be cold."
Rolling his eyes, Disi barked something that Janus was pretty sure he didn't want to be translated. "Jeez, okay," he mumbled, starting back towards the direction he thought was the camp, he couldn't exactly be sure, but it was something, right?
Disi purred and folded his wings back, shaking out his head with a self-satisfied expression and a smug smile. The two continued walking through the green-dappled forest, twigs snapping and leaves crunching underfoot. Janus glanced around, trying to keep his eyes everywhere at once as the forest kept making sounds. Animal sounds.
He started to shiver a little, anxiety creeping up and burying itself in the pit of his stomach again. "I don't plan to get eaten by an animal today, no thank you," he whispered to himself, trying to calm himself down.
A loud crack came from behind him and he turned around with a yelp of surprise. To his shock, all he saw were more trees, shadows stretching like cobwebs between the branches. "Who's there?" he called, trying to make his voice more certain than he felt.
Suddenly, someone tackled Janus from behind, knocking Disi clean off his shoulders.