Whoever heard of a monster that could love? /open

Eye lashes heavy with the dust of sparkling white snowflakes lazily flitted open. Sable's emerald eyes took in the view of an ever thickening mass of silver and frost, but something stood out in the distance. It looked like a tall humanoid silhouette, until she lifted her head and narrowed her gaze to distinguish an accompanying tail... 

Sabel slipped her glove back on, moving slowly and cautiously. What was a lizalfos doing in Hyrule Field? Her heartbeat hastened as fear began to course through her. She was unarmored and only carried a small bladed fan for defense. Foolishly, she hadn't anticipated that she might run into danger of this caliber – a foe who could easily take her down with the swipe of its claw. 

Sable clicked her heels to the sides of Keelah hoping to gain speed but was met with a whinnying rear of its front legs. What ailed her equestrian friend? Looking around perplexed, Sable noticed yellow glowing orbs slinking towards her in the snow.

They blinked...

She was now surrounded by white boes while a lizalfos lurked on the horizon. The temperature was dropping, the sun was setting, and her hope was waning. The damsel prayed for a miracle as she drew her fan. Keelah trotted nervously in place while the boes crept closer through the snow... At this point, the best she could hope for was that the Light Ribbon would be the last thing she saw in this cold empty life.

It was difficult to say what exactly was causing Sable to tremble, her fear or the cold. She also wondered which would get her first – the boes or the lizalfos – as she imagined either death would be painful and unpleasant.

Just as one of the fluffy balls of demented snow leapt to attack, she shielded her face in her cloak and looked away, but nothing happened. The woman's clenched eyes slowly opened with confusion. She turned to look back, peeking over her raised arm just from under the brim of her hood. The lizalfos was fighting off the boes.

All of the action must have startled Keelah, for she reared again with a shrieking whine, but something happened that Sable couldn't explain. There was a silent communication from one beast to the other and Keelah was calmed from the intentional reassuring stare of the lizalfos.

Now a blur of black scales, animal skins, and exlposions of snow whirling infront of her, the lizalfos expertly fended off the horde of boes, but not without taking a hit. Sable found herself wanting to scream, but she was frozen in shock... and also just frozen in general. 

What was happening? She didn't know much about the reptoids, but was this common? Perhaps lizalfos just didn't like frozen dinner and one frost bite from a boe would have ruined her appeal to his appetite...
But that couldn't have been the case. The creature demolished the last boe and turned to stare at Sable.

He spoke.

Sable couldn't believe her ears! It caught her so off-guard that she had to ask him to repeat himself.

"I.. I beg your... pardon?"

She pulled her windswept hair away from her eyes with gloved hands. Was she seeing this correctly? Her heart was pounding in her chest as the setting sun briefly broke through the overcast blizzard through a slit between it and the horizon. The snow gleamed golden in these final seconds of daylight, and – suddenly – Sable was overwhelmed by everything that had happened. She feinted then and there, too in shock to worry or wonder if she would awaken.. 

 
Fainting didn't typically yield such a prolonged state of unconsciousness, but perhaps she had taken the fall off of Keelah a little harder than it seemed. She was out like a rock, sleeping heavier than a goron and dreaming like a babe.

In her dream, she was falling through a cyclone of snow when she had suddenly been wrapped in Klaus' embrace. His skin was radiating warmth as she nuzzled herself into the space between his chin and chest. When she finally awoke, she found the warmth to be from that of fur blankets illuminated by the soft glow of a nearby fire.

Green eyes slowly shifted to assess the environment. Someone was clearly taking care of her, but who? She suddenly saw their shadow projected on the cave wall before she saw the figure itself. A thick tail twitched back and forth and as it looked to the side, a long snout revealed itself. It was the lizalfos from before. Had she been rescued or kidnapped? Gently lifting herself up, Sable saw that Keelah was with them and staying warm by the fire. Turning her gaze to the mouth of the grotto, she saw a blizzard raining down like a frozen armageddon.

Her stomach grumbled loudly with hunger sounding like a sinking bucket of air in tank of water. She immediately moved her hand to it as if to hush it but knew that wasn't going to help. Cautiously, she looked up to see if the lizalfos had heard. What a peculiar creature. Sable wiggled all fingers and toes. Everything was accounted for, so he obviously wasn't trying to eat her... But why not?

The tales Sable had heard revolved around ferocious monsters with talons and fangs littered with bits of flesh and blood. She had heard they were dangerous, territorial reptiles who were loyal to a wrathful dragon god of the Eldin Mountains, but perhaps it was all a myth. Whatever the case, this particular one had saved her. She was tremendously grateful but terribly confused and unsure of what to make of the situation. She didn't want to be as much of a fool as she was going out into Hyrule Field without adequate protection by trusting this stranger, but something about them made her feel safe. Perhaps it was the fact that the blanket had been gingerly tucked in around her, an act of compassion she knew all too well... Her father had done that for her whilst living in the frozen caps of the Snowpeak Mountains. Every night, he pushed the covers in beneath her, swaddling her in a warm cocoon before kissing her head and saying goodnight.

She was about to speak, but her words got caught in the drought of her parched throat. She tried desperately to clear it, producing just enough saliva to wet her gullet and say, "Thank you..."

Sable lightly jumped at the lizalfos hiss as it offered her food. She gingerly reached out and took the jerky from the creature, her eyes fixated on his trying her best to read him since there wasn't much verbal communication. He clearly didn't speak fluent Hylian, but it was surprising that he spoke any at all.

There always seemed to be a particle of her being that thrived off the thrill and excitement of danger. This delusion existed as a small ember in the depths of her psyche. There was something about being on the edge of death and walking away that enthralled her and empowered her. After all, as a trained courtesan, why should death be any exception for her flirting? However, this was certainly a unique situation. It wasn’t like the stealth and criminal transactions she had experienced in Nocturne. This would be – to anyone else’s standards – a far more dangerous scenario, but Sable was slowly coming to the conclusion that this Lizalfos was less of a monster than the drug lords and assassins she interacted with on a regular basis. Those who wore masks hiding true forms that were much more frightening than a lizalfo's scales and fangs.

Sable inspected the jerky. She wasn’t sure if this particular lizalfos consumed food that was ingestible for humans or whether he was even familiar with the human diet, so she sniffed it. It smelled like normal jerky. If the animal skins lying around were any safe indication, it wasn’t the meat of anything she hadn’t eaten before. Her stomach grumbled once more. Feed me, feed me. She took a bite. Chewy, as jerky should be. It wasn’t anything like the gourmet feasts she had experienced at the royal court, but it was food and that was all she needed.

She wondered if Klaus or her maid Kirsten had assembled a search party for her. How long was she out? Reaching down into her blouse, she procured a small pocket watch from her bosom. It wasn’t even midnight.

A change of wind sent a chilling gust directly into the cave. Sable wrapped her cloak around her tighter and suddenly remembered two things.

1.) Reptiles were cold blooded creatures, and this one seemed far from home.
2.) She recalled seeing a boe get a hit on the lizalfos during the battle preceding her blackout.

She found herself concerned for the poor creature. It had been so nurturing toward her… It even endangered itself to protect her, and for what? It was uncharacteristically kind. Sable often guarded herself from others having been known to become attached and unyielding to the point of her compassion being taken advantage of, but at this point, she owed some kindness to this stranger.

After swallowing her food with a bit of a dry and strained gulp, she asked, “Do you have a name?”

Sable kept her eyes low as the lizalfos moved around. Every once in a while, she would shift her eyes to watch him as he moved about to fetch and arrange things. He seemed cold. She wished there was something she could do.

When he finally responded to her question, it came in his native tongue. That was clear, but what he had said was anything but. She couldn’t help but to softly chuckle as she looked down at her hands. She licked her lips and smiled. “I could try to say that, but I’d butcher it and that just wouldn’t do.” She looked up at him unafraid for the first time. “Hmm…” She thought a moment as she tilted her head. Her eyes narrowed as she looked around. The cogs in her mind were clearly ticking. Perhaps she could give him a name that her people could pronounce. But what?

There was one name… She had favored it once in hoping to name her first born son before the cruel complications of fate had a different plan.

“How about I call you… Braydon?” It felt good to say, to put it to use. A good name like that shouldn’t be wasted, thrown away, or forgotten. “Do you like that name?” She wondered if he even understood.

She laughed lightly, partially because she was impressed he had said it so successfully on his first try but also because she was giddy to think of it all; her sitting here in a snowstorm conversing – sort of – with a lizalfos who she had just met and named. The delight of the unusual and unexpected serendipity of it all washed over her, completely relaxing her in his presence.

As the storm lightened and the creature looked out, Sable wondered if she would see him again when it was all over. He likely wouldn’t be able to walk through Castle Town anytime soon, at least not without a hard time. The tragic death of the King and the attack that issued it was still an open wound. The dust had hardly settled from the chaos. She imagined his kind were taking a lot of backlash if any others were out about the fields. But where were the others?

“It must get lonely in this cave. What are you doing out here by yourself?” She did her best to gesture to the things that she spoke of when she could to help him understand. Sable was beginning to realize that longwinded sentences would only confuse him. She would make an effort to keep things short and simple from now on.