183Chapter 2.
The next day, Ren was hot, sweaty, muddy, and ALMOST regretting that she had decided to do this in the first place.
There was an advantage to having shorter hair, she decided. It wasn't quite as hot as it was with long hair.
Sitting down under the uncertain shade of a scrawny little tree, she took out an apple. She was about to take a bite out of it when. . .
POP!
A very cute, very disgruntled looking man who looked a little older than her popped out of nowhere.
He was very tall, with dark brown hair that had natural blonde highlights to it and piercing blue eyes. And he looked very annoyed with her for some strange reason.
"Uh. . .hi?" Ren said nervously, hoping that this wasn't one of her parents' mage-conjured guards come to fetch her home.
And the man scowled ferociously at her. "Gods. Just when I suddenly find out that I'm supposed to be your fairy guardian, you have to go and run away with a tralalala without a care in the world."
". . ." Ren blinked at him. "Um. . ."
"What is it, princess?"
"EEP! I mean. . .I'm not a princess! What makes you think I'm a princess? No, I'm definitely not a princess. How could I be a princess?" Ren looked wildly around. "Uh. . .the princess went that way!" she pointed in a completely random direction.
"Yeah, whatever, buttercup. Now get your royal butt back to the palace where it belongs!"
Ren glared at him. No matter how hot, how cute, or how admittedly scary this weird man was, she was NOT going back home.
"What is it now?" The man sighed, fingering a silver dagger in his belt.
Think, girl, think, Ren thought to herself, panicking. "You don't seem like a fairy." She subtly shifted her position so she could see around the man. "No wings! HA!" she crossed her arms and grinned triumphantly up at the man.
(a/n: yes, she's acting childish. XP. So?)
The man rolled his eyes. "Why is it that people always picture fairies as tiny little miniature people with pretty little wings and who wear glittery clothes and have an unhealthy obsession with bells?" he raised an eyebrow. "OR they're plump, cheery old ladies with a wand that make poor servant girls transform into a princess with terribly unpractical glass slippers?"
Ren began to suffer a coughing fit. That was one of the theories on how her mother had won her father's heart. Yeah, right.
"Uh-huh. I have a fairy god-something or another. Go play practical jokes on poor defenseless animals or whatever you do all day."
The man's blue eyes narrowed as he hissed. "Of all the people, I get a smart-ass princess to deal with. Princess, you are going home NOW! Even if I have to carry you myself."
Ren suddenly decided that this very hot man was getting on her nerves. Gah! Shut up, Brain! He's not hot! Well, okay, so he is hot, but still!
"I'm not going! I'm not going to marry some piggy-prince who was forgotten when the gods handed out brains!" Ren was rapidly turning an unattractive shade of scarlet.
The man was beginning to look very, very, very, displeased, to put it mildly.
"Look, honey, I didn't come to argue with you. I came to bring you back to where you belong. Which is THE PALACE!"
"Don't call me honey!"
"Fine, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS!"
"Shut up! Do you want people in the next kingdom to hear you and decide that I would make a very nice hostage?"
"Well, being your fairy guardian, it's my duty to protect you from every single person who means you harm."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that. So what do fairy guardians do all day, anyway?" Ren forgot to be mad.
"Sit around, rescue hysterical princesses such as yourself from big scary monsters, rescue hysterical princesses such as yourself from insane kidnappers, rescue hysterical princesses such as yourself from evil sorcerers, you get the picture." The man waved his hand around dismissively.
"Gee, what a small life. Go rescue some other hysterical princess, then. And I'm not a hysterical princess!"
"Oh?" the man grinned. Ren eyed him with suspicion. She didn't like that little look in his blue eyes.
He plucked a big hairy spider from off Ren's shoulder, and smiled again. "And the waterworks begin."
Ren screamed, and leapt ten feet away, still screaming. "GET-THAT-THING- AWAY-FROM-M-AAAAAAAAAAAH!"
Another spider had just fallen off her head.
Calmly, the man squished each spider with his dagger. "Not hysterical, hmm?"
"Shut up." Ren said sourly, still shaking. "I have arachnophobia." She frowned for a moment. "How did you know I hate spiders?"
"I'm your fairy guardian. Of course I know. And you are no way going to get away as being a boy in that disguise."
Ren looked down. Her chest was still bound, and her hair was as short as a boy's (which, in those days, wasn't all that short) and tied back, and she was dressed in men's clothes. Then she sighed, remembering that her face was too obviously female. "And? What's it to you? Now go away and get captured by some cruel tyrant that likes to torture young men like you."
The man looked up at the sky. "Gods grant me patience."
And with that, the argument began all over again.
"Will you be reasonable?" The man shouted. "And my name is not 'Idiot', it's Varien!"
"Ha ha, pretty boy name!" Ren mocked him.
"Shut up, HIGHNESS!"
"No can do, VARIEN!"
"Fine then, if you're going to be so stubborn and pig-headed about it, I'll just leave you to whatever horrible monsters, insane kidnappers, and evil sorcerers you annoy next!"
"Fine then! Anything if you'll just GO!" Ren yelled back at him.
"Fine, then!"
"Fine!"
"Fine!" Varien turned his back on her and began stomping away.
Pause.
"FINE!" Ren yelled at his retreating back.
Then she shrieked, as another spider scuttled her way. "VARIEN!"
A dagger embedded itself right through the middle of the spider on the tree, as Varien calmly sauntered back. "You called, milady?"
"Shut up, idiot!"
Varien raised an eyebrow. "That is no way to address your fairy guardian."
"Well, TOO BAD, buster!"
"I am going to be traveling with you, after all."
"Huh?"
Varien gathered up her sack, and slung it over his shoulder. "I am going to be traveling with you," he said, as if talking to a two-year-old.
"Oh."
"So, where to?" Varien looked at her, blue eyes glinting with amusement.
"Um. . .away?"
Again, Varien looked up at the sky and muttered, "Why me?"
a/n: how was that? R/R plz!