The next week saw all members of the Watcher household back at school-- or, at least, those members who were supposed to be at school. Aloia, or Deiv, or someone had apparently made Akija and Cacohpeny's excuses to the professors, and not a single one commented on their absence. Of course, no one had bothered to tell the other bonded pairs this, and there was some surprise among the students upon seeing the tall half-demon and little red daemon. Some were pleased upon seeing Akija hadn't disappeared for good, though Cacopheny's welcome was predictably a bit less warm. A few whispered rumors were going around, as such things would, about just why they were gone. Cacopheny ignored them all, and Sentio would nervously laugh and say he couldn't say, when asked.

But, on the whole, everything was back to normal, or whatever passed for normal, within a few days. The whole group spent morning classes together, and then Akija and Cacopheny escaped after lunch for the Watcher house. There was no reason for Cacopheny to endure the afternoon classes, as there was nothing there he admitted to interest in and by then he was very ready for a break, anyway. Since Akija wasn't about to let him walk home by himself-- and she didn't need extra schooling-- she went with him.

Most days, it was a quick walk, with Cacopheny anxious to get back under the safety of a roof. Mid-week, though, on a particularly overcast day, the first of the autumn since he'd dared leaving the Watcher home, he seemed content to simply saunter along, eyes actually on the sky rather than glued to the ground or darting around nervously. It was actually rather odd: he'd seen the occasional stray cloud before, but never a whole sky full of them, and it was difficult to believe that the small, puffy, floating things in the sky could actually cover the whole of it.

"Toess ssis happen ovten?" he asked Akija, in the middle of a long silence. "Sse sky. Like ssis."

"Oh, sure," Akija replied, her hands in her pockets as she walked, perfectly content with the slower pace Cacopheny had set. "It means rain's comin' in, usually. Or snow. But it's not cold enough fer snow, yet. But I betcha we'll be gettin' rain today or tomorrow."

"I haf never seen rain... or snow," he said quietly, frowning. He knew what the words meant-- "snow" brought up the concepts "cold", "wet", and "white", and rain "wet" and "gray", among other things-- but that wasn't the same. "Vat iss't like?"

Akija wrinkled her nose. "Rain's... well, wet. Snow's wet and cold." Well, that sounded exactly like the concepts in his head. "I don't like rain much, though it's kinda fun t'watch when it has lightning with it... snow's fun, though. Me an' Aeta have snowball fights every winter." She grinned. "Remind me t'teach ya the best way t'roll a snowball when winter comes."

"Ven vill that be?" he asked, a little blankly.

The daemon blinked, and ran a quick count-off on her fingers. "Two, three months, somethin' like that. It just kinda happens. Seasons kinda creep up on ya like that. One day you've got the gross wetness of autumn going on, and next day you've got winter's first snow comin' down on yer head."

"All rrright. I vill try to rememper to remint you." He smiled some at her, then looked back up at the sky. "I ssink I like it like ssis. Is not so... open."

"Pah," Akija chuffed good-naturedly. "You like this kinda weather, you kin have it. Too grey fer me. I like my sky, an' I like it nice an' blue. Grey's all... depressing." She stuck her tongue out. "Gets all humid, too. Blech." Cacopheny's only answer to that was a shrug. He didn't know about depressing, but it did feel safe; he just didn't know how to explain that to her, so he didn't try.

They hadn't even gotten halfway home when Cacopheny found out first hand just what rain was like, for the clouds opened up and started dropping water on them before they'd even reached the stairs leading down from the circular walkway. There weren't even a few first, warning drops: he just took a step, and quite suddenly there was water falling from the sky! Cacopheny froze in shock.

Akija did not. She swore darkly and curled her wings over her head, using the elastic webbing between her wing-fingers as a shield against the falling water. Then she bolted, leaving Cacopheny behind her blinking in the rain. It was only belatedly that he realized Akija had not waited for him, and broke into a halting, awkward-looking jog in an attempt to catch up. He doubted he could; Akija might not have been able to match his long strides, but she was used to running. This much he knew.

Puddles were already forming on the rough stone, and he splashed through a couple all-unknowing before running out of breath and stopping, already soaked to the skin. Bent over, hands on his knees, and hair dripping in his face, he waited, trying to catch his breath again. Through the rain and his hair, he couldn't even tell how far ahead his friend had gotten.

Oh, but this is beautiful....

"What?" he gasped out, blinking water out of his eyes.

All this... rain.

Cacopheny wasn't particularly concerned with how pretty the rain was. He was cold, now, and his clothes were drenched, which made them almost unbearably heavy. The thought of somehow getting home with the sodden clothing hanging from him was daunting. No, definitely not concerned with the view: he'd worry about what it looked like once he was safely inside and could look at it through a window, while he was warm and dry inside!

Spoil sport....

"If you were the one out here getting wet, you'd probably think differently," he grumbled breathlessly.

So let me out, I'll come take a look....

He shivered. "Rather not, thanks...."

"You okay?" He looked up at the familiar voice calling from the walkway ahead of him. Akija was coming back for him, even though she was as drenched as he was. He forced himself to straighten up, smiling some for her.

Then lightning flashed, and he jumped, quite literally, staring around with wide eyes. Then the thunder came, a moment later, muffling Akija's second curse of the day. "Not good!" she exclaimed, hurrying across the rest of the distance between her and the startled Cacopheny. She all but lunged for him, and he was still so stunned that he let her catch his hand. "Come on, let's go!"

"All right," he said, blinking dazedly, in demonic still. "What was that?"

She started hurrying along, and he followed obediently, letting her pull him towards the stairs which he could just barely make out through the torrent. "Lightning and thunder," she answered in the common tongue. "Means the storm's right overhead and we need to get home quick!"

"Why?" he asked simply.

"Lightning can be dangerous, and that lightning was close," she answered, scowling at the rainy veil around them.

Cacopheny didn't answer, just stumbling after her down the stairs, paying more attention to the sky than to where he put his feet. Lightning struck above them once more, en route, and then he paused, watching the bolt snake down and sear the tip of one of the towers far above them. "Not close enough," he muttered under his breath, voice oddly pitched for him and, somehow, not quite as raspy as usual.

Someone was tugging on his hand. He didn't bother to look, distracted by another flash of lightning and roll of thunder. "Can we save the storm-watching for after we're in someplace warm and dry?" he heard, and this time he let her continue drawing him after her down the stairs. He even drew together the presence of mind to watch where he was going, until he got to the bottom of the stairs. There, again, he turned his gaze skyward, almost blankly, looking for another streak of deadly light. It earned him a funny look from Akija.

"At least you're enjoying yourself, I guess..." she sighed, turning her attention back to the road before her.

He answered with a vague sort of chuckle and more demonic, though he did follow her obediently, not pulling free of her grip. "The possibilities, dear... the possilities, that's all...."

The daemon flicked an ear and briefly glanced back. "Sorry, I only caught the tail end of that... what's all? Why are you using demonic?"

For a moment, that captured his attention, and he glanced at her with a small, puzzled frown. "Why am I-- oh, the words. I'm sorry, I don't speak your language." Then his eyes went back to the sky again, just in time for another ladder of light, this one just crawling its way across the clouds rather than striking earth. "Come back down, beautiful one, no reason to hide all the way up there....."

"Well don't expect much conversation from me when I can't understand you," Akija muttered sourly.

Rather predictably, there wasn't much conversation, not until they reach the door of the Watcher house. That was when Cacopheny, as if just now realizing that she actually meant to bring him inside, balked again. Akija very nearly lost her footing when he suddenly stopped. "Why are we going there?" he asked indignantly, voice even less raspy and almost, oddly enough, feminine in intonation. With longed-for warmth and dryness just another step or two away, the daemon could do little but stare at Cacopheny as if he, well, were crazy. In a different way.

"Be... cause it's warm and dry inside?" she finally managed, bewildered and caught off-guard.

"And boring..." the half-demon sighed, looking back up at the sky with a very odd expression, fixing a stare on the next streak of lightning that was full of something like hunger. "Just a little closer, my fiery one...."

She left him standing there, satisfyingly alone and yearning after lightning, for just long enough to open the door and circle back around him. It was just long enough to forget she was there, and her next words startled him into a blink. "Sorry, but-- inside!" And with that declaration, she levered into him, forcibly shoving him through the open doorway. Not ready for it, he went sprawling, landing in a blinking, dripping heap on the floor.

A heap steadily forming a puddle on the floor, which he picked himself up from with a groan. "Vat-- ve're here already?"

"Huh?"

For a moment Akija and Cacopheny just blinked at each other, but then one of the shadows let out a wail that made things more clear.

I want more of that lightning! I want it to strike!

As the shadow dissolved into insubstantial tears and faded into the background of his thoughts, Cacopheny hissed softly. "Sssssssorry," he muttered, realizing abruptly what had happened and feeling the start of a headache-- caused, he expected, by the shivering more than the shadow, but it was nice to have someone to blame. "Jzova kot out...."

"Oh." Akija blinked. A moment later, realization sunk in. "Oh! You mean a-- Well, no wonder you--"

But whatever Akija wondered, she suddenly cast it aside with a hiss of disgust as she became re-aware of the torrent she was still standing in. With a wordless cry of "Gah!" which made him jump with surprise, she all but leapt the last two steps into the house and kicked the door shut behind her. At the expression on her face, Cacopheny promptly forgot being irritated with Jova for-- likely-- making a fool of him in whatever attempt to get him killed she'd made, this time. Instead, he grinned, still dripping, in the kitchen at her.

"I feel like a fish!" she exclaimed, already halfway into fighting off the sodden mess of her shirt.

"You ton't look like von," he replied, his voice entirely his own again. "Your brosser vood look more like von, if he vere here. Your vur sticks up too much." And he reached over to tousle her soaking wet hair.

Akija blinked again at the hair tousling, then wrinkled her nose up at her friend as he left her hair sticking out at all angles. "Well, sure, now it does, no thanks to you!"

With a devious look, she gave her shirt a blind toss into the kitchen sink-- it missed, landing half inside and half on the counter-- then quickly, before he knew quite what she was doing, she reached up to give the half-demon a double-handed tousling of his own. She could only just barely reach. Then she stood back, hands on her hips, to admire her handiwork, as he blinked at her, only able to see thin strips of her grin though the hair. For him, an enthusiastic mussing like that meant making thicker tangles and completely hiding his face behind a curtain of sopping wet hair. "How do you like it, eh?" she demanded impishly.

Lifting part of the hair aside and rolling his eyes up to look at it, he heaved a sigh-- rather larger than it had to be, but hey. "At leasst your hair iss zhort," was his thought on the matter before he tried pushing the whole messy mane of it back. The water, though it was good for little else at this point, at least helped keep it out of his eyes when he actually got it there. The whole act got smothered laughter from Akija, which was largely his aim, so he was pleased.

"And as we stand her poking fun at each other's hair, we're dripping all over Mum's nice wood floor and making ourselves all the more likely to catch colds!" she finally announced, and he winced at the thought of the massive matron seeing the puddles they'd made. "So, you can take the bathroom and dump your clothes in the tub-- I'll bring you one of your extra sets. And once we're in dry clothes again, we can mop up this puddle we've gone and made in here, then, if ya like, I'll help ya undo that mess I just made," she smirked, pointing at his hair. That, he perked up a bit for; as if he would ever turn down someone combing his hair! Or at least helping with it. "All right?"

"All rrrright," he repeated meekly, nodding, and made his dripping, shivering, but fairly content way to the bathroom. Not even Jova sniffling piteously in the back of his thoughts could quite ruin it for him.