Slayers - Childish

Childish.

Filia stirred her lemonade contentedly with her straw. It was a perfect day, the kind that even Xellos couldn't ruin. She sat on her back porch and looked out into the dew-glistened morning.

"I think spring is my favorite time of year," she said as a yellow finch let out a burst of birdsong.

"Oh really?" Xellos said, with a willingness to test her previous assumption about him. "Which part do you like best: the constant rain or the smell of worms the rain leaves behind?"

Filia breathed in the moist air that only had the slightest aroma of worms. "You're wrong," she insisted. "It's the most beautiful season there is."

Xellos cocked his head to one side to look at her. "Autumn has its changing colors, winter its frosted vistas, and in summer everything is at its height of liveliness. What makes spring superior among the four?"

Filia shook her head. "Someone like you could never understand. It's just… the feeling in the air. It's like everything is being renewed. It's full of new life: carefree and… innocent."

At this exact moment, a squirrel ran across Filia's yard, hotly pursued by a second squirrel.

"Though not for very long," Xellos commented, following the two animals with his eye.

Filia managed to avert her eyes before the second squirrel pounced upon the first squirrel, but she was just in time to see a female duck being chased around the shrub at the edge of her property by, not one, but two male ducks.

Quacks filled the air.

Filia slammed her lemonade down on the porch, got up and stomped back into the house without looking back. Xellos raised his eyebrows and followed her.

"Filia?" he tried when he followed her through the screen door.

"I've changed my mind," she said shortly, not turning around from the dirty dishes she'd chosen to occupy herself with. "Autumn is much better."

Xellos leaned against the wall. "What, just because of that?" he asked, gesturing to beyond the door.

There was another loud quack from outside.

Filia dropped her scrubbing brush angrily into the sink. It plopped under water and then surfaced. "Just shut up," she said, retrieving it.

"Don't you think you're being a little… childish?" Xellos asked, not shutting up at all.

"I said shut up!"

"I mean," Xellos said, scratching his cheek speculatively, "what did you think the birds were singing about?"

Filia whipped around, waving a ladle at him in a threatening manner. "I thought even you couldn't ruin a day like this! I guess I was wrong!"

Xellos surveyed her in an extremely unimpressed way. "It's not as though it's my fault the mortal races reproduce sexually."

Filia collapsed slightly, her outstretch ladle now looking more like an ordinary spoon than a demon vanquishing sword. Technically he had a point there, but nevertheless.

"I mean, you like ducklings, don't you?" Xellos asked. "It's very juvenile to like ducklings but blanch at the steps necessary to get ducklings. But I suppose it doesn't surprise me. The Dragon race has always had a high and mighty attitude about these kinds of things."

Knocking his brains out with a ladle won't solve anything, Filia warned herself as she felt her grip tightening around the spoon. She forced herself to turn around and dry dishes.

"I suppose part of it is a survival thing," Xellos commented from behind her. "Adult dragons don't need to eat that much, but hatchlings require a lot of feeding and are a very large strain on resources. Then there's the fact that dragons are very long lived. If you weren't  a backwards and sexually repressed bunch, then the dragon population would have expanded beyond its means."

A crack appeared in the center of the plate that Filia was cleaning.

"Not only that," Xellos went on, determined to explore this topic to its full extent, "but if the dragon population got too large then the monster race might get concerned about their growing ranks and choose to rectify the situation."

That did it. The plate broke.

Filia swung around. "How dare you threaten genocide in my house?!"

"I wasn't threatening anything," Xellos said in a slightly annoyed voice. "I was just stating a fact."

"Well, state your facts elsewhere because I'm not interested in listening!" Filia declared, her voice getting high pitched. She turned back to the sink yet again, hoping that he'd finally take a hint.

The kitchen was filled only with the squeak of Filia rubbing a washcloth over her wet dishes for a few minutes. Then Xellos said, as thought there'd been no interruption in his previous line of thought, "Then there's the matter of control, which I'm sure your dragon elders have thought up. Dragons have a lot of rules, you know. Well," he laughed, "it's obvious that a population beset with guilt and shame is easier to manipulate."

"That's not how it is and you know it," Filia countered fiercely. "Stop trying to turn having scruples into something wicked."

Xellos raised an eyebrow. "Are you telling me that you're not controlled by guilt and shame?"

"Of course not," Filia said, hands on her hips as she turned around to glare at him. "I have nothing to feel guilty about."

"Is that a fact?" Xellos asked insincerely, pulling out a chair from her kitchen table and sitting down. "Tell me then, how do the Golden Dragons incite these marvelous virtues without blame or fear-mongering?"

Filia hesitated. Thinking back to her youth, well… it wasn't a subject that dragons talked about that much… or at all, really. She could still remember a time when she'd been quite young and her friend Mintha had made an innocent inquiry to their teacher wondering where eggs came from. She'd been told to stand in the corner until she was willing to behave like a proper dragon and to not ask again unless she wanted worse punishment. That probably classified as blame and fear-mongering.

When they'd gotten older…

"There was this… book," Filia recalled out loud, "of all the things that unmarried dragons are not allowed to do."

Xellos considered the Dragon race's attitude toward impropriety and their general fondness for rule collecting. "I imagine it was quite a large book."

Filia couldn't help nodding. It had been huge. And it got bigger every year. A classmate had commented in a whispered voice that it must have binder rings in it to make it easier to add new debaucheries.

"So… what was in it?" Xellos asked in a curious voice.

Filia bit her lip and shook her head. "We weren't allowed to read it," she said.

Xellos raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"They said it would give us ideas," Filia explained.

Xellos pondered this. Dragons possibly had a better understanding of psychology than he'd assumed. "Then what about married dragons?" he asked.

"From what I always understood," Filia said, rooting through memories, "whenever two dragons get married they are given a pamphlet."

"Of things they aren't allowed to do?" Xellos asked.

"No," Filia said. "Of things they are allowed to do."

Xellos stared at her in silence.

"And a list of instructions," Filia went on.

Xellos's silence got, if at all possible, more silent.

"And a diagram with numbered parts," Filia finished.

Xellos opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then opened it to say: "Filia?"

"What?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Backwards and sexually repressed," he said firmly.

"Oh, don't give me that!" Filia snapped. "There's nothing wrong with having wholesome virtues. And if you have to write five hundred strictly enforced rules and regulations to get them then… well, what's the alternative? Just a downward spiral into decadent immorality and detestable sin!"

Xellos had to figure that she'd lifted 'decadent immorality and detestable sin' straight from one of the Dragon race's sermons. It had that familiar cadence and hammered home repetition that they were so fond of. "Come to think of it," he said quietly, "you're not really sure what that detestable sin is, are you?"

Filia was taken aback. She was sure she wouldn't like where this line of thought was heading.

"Oh, I'm sure you've managed to collect some idea over the years," Xellos said thoughtfully, "from the vague forbiddances of your elders, overheard conversations and half-understood jokes. But I'd guess that there's a pretty good chance that you're not at all familiar with, shall we say, the particulars." He looked up at her.

Filia wished that she hadn't put her ladle away. Whether or not it would solve anything, Xellos deserved to have his brains knocked out with a serving utensil.

"Do I need to give you 'The Talk', Filia?" Xellos inquired.

"What?! No!" Filia yelled, her horror knowing no bounds. "Absolutely not!"

"When a man and woman love—or sometimes hate—each other very much—"

"GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN THIS INSTANT!" Filia screeched.