Since I have limited time to do the usual author's notes, I'm going
 to provide full replies to Lauren-sama's reviews (because there's been 
two reviews from her since the last time) and speed through the rest.
     (Sorry 'bout this: I've been dealing with renewing Ainself this 
week, and been very busy yesterday and today at a con.  I've been 
enjoying the con, though.)

     Thank you very much, Lauren-sama, for your reviews for the 6th and 
7th chapters...  (I suppose that I am probably right in thinking that 
the 5th chapter has no reviews now because FF.net eats them.)
     Anyway, part of why I had to include the line about Val serving as 
a night light _was_ because it plausible.  (The rest is because it was 
funny.)  I make an effort to nicely portray Filia; she's really a nice 
chara, and I don't hate her or anything.  She's just awkward to write 
sometimes.
     The sex scenes are intended to be poetic, and I'd be rather unhappy
 if they came off of gratuitous because they'd then not fit in the story
 at all.  (I also like Xelloss's 'uber-genki' periods, and knew that 
Filia at least would not be in the mood in the morning.)
     Oh, and thanks for the chocolate!

     And now, for the speedy replies to the rest of the reviewers:
     Kioku, I didn't know that I actually bothered planning my stories 
as much as I just remember to go back regularly and read what I've 
already written.  Saki, I've always preferred role reversals with Xelloss 
and Filia, and, well, I wonder what you'll think is causing Filia's 
'episodes' after this chapter.  Ludacris, thank you _very_ much, I make 
an effort to keep Xelloss and Filia's intimate scenes funny because it 
makes them much easier for me to write.  T, I'm sorry, thank you for 
reading and reviewing anyway.  Lady Deathscythe, I missed you.

     Slayers is the creation of Hajime Kanzanka and Rui Araizumi.  I 
don't own it; they and a lot of other people do.  I'm not making any 
profit off of this story.
     All lyrics used in this story are from the songs of This Mortal 
Coil.  The original version of _Fond Affections_ is by Rema Ream, and is
 copyright Rema Rema & Beggars Banquet Music.

+===+ +===+ +===+   +===+ +===+ +===+   +===+ +===+ +===+

Mr Somewhere
+=== A Slayers Fanfic by Ryo Hoshi
08 +===+ Dreams Made Flesh

                 There's no light at the end of it all
                       Let's all sit down and cry
                   There's no light at the beginning
                       Let's all sit down and cry
                                -- Fond Affections

     Filia sighed as she realized that Xelloss was not feeling inclined 
to move.  "Come on, Xelloss-san...  You can't be that badly hurt!"  He 
carefully shifted, nuzzling her.
     "Filia-san," he said in a serious and strained tone, "I may not be 
sympathetic for those who get hurt, but that's _not_ because I don't get
to feel pain myself.  Right now...I am in _*pain*_."
     "But...you're not injured...?" she asked, cautiously and a bit 
worried.
     "If you mean, 'Will you be able to get it up tonight?' the answer 
is," he blushed slightly, "I hope so.  Can I help you look for a new 
bed?"  _It would be *very* embarrassing to be seen by other mazoku 
walking funny_, he refrained from adding.
     "It might be easier with you there," she admitted.  "I was thinking
 of getting a bigger bed, a sturdier one, and maybe it could be 
reinforced with a few spells..." she said, shyly.
     Xelloss chuckled, the sweet, honey-like taste of her shyness 
delightful.  "One I could tie you down on, Filia-san?"
     "Xelloss!" she said, shocked and blushing both at the idea and at 
the thrill the idea gave her.  "That's dirty, perverted...!"
     "No, that's what _you_ do to _me_ is...  I just want to tie you 
down at night for my own protection."
     "Do you mean that you don't enjoy having sex with me, Xelloss?" she
 said, rather _too_ sweetly.  "And don't you dare dodge that question, 
or tell me, 'That is a secret,'" she added while slipping a hand under 
his hips to curl around a certain part of his form which he had become 
recently _personally_ aware of the sensitivity of, "or you will _pay_."
     Xelloss looked up at her face, his eyes wide.  "You're a wonderful,
 noble, kind, and _gentle_ dragon lady, and I am very, _very_ grateful 
that you permit me to lie with you," he said, sounding _very_ earnest.  
"_*Please*_ don't hurt me!"
     Filia smiled, and let go.  _Thank you, Lord!_ Xelloss thought, and 
scrambled to get off her, not even trying to hide the fact that the area
 between his legs hurt.  With a thought, he was clothed.  "I'll go make 
tea for us while you get dressed, Filia-san," Xelloss said and 
teleported out before Filia could protest.

     Xelloss held, carefully one end of the iron bed frame while Filia 
worked to get the other end in the right place.  The new mattress, large
 enough for two, leaned against the wall.  The remains of her old, 
wooden bed had been removed, broken up for firewood, and its mattress 
taken to a spare room she said she had been planning on turning into a 
guest room.
     It seemed like the best time to ask the questions that had been 
bothering them ever since they had gone to the store where they found 
the iron bed.  "Filia-san," caution firmly residing in his voice, "why 
did you react so strangely when the sales clerk assumed that we were 
getting married?"  She had _not_ reacted with anger or offense as he had
 expected; instead he had tasted the distinctly warm and comforting 
flavor of sorrow in her emotions.
     Filia blushed slightly, lowering her end of the frame to the floor.
  "I can't get married."
     Xelloss looked at her, confused.  "You can't get married?  But I 
thought that you no longer had to remain a maiden, now that you retired 
from being a priestess of the Fire Dragon King..."
     "My people insisted that we could not get properly married unless 
the ceremony was performed by a priest of the Fire Dragon King," Filia 
replied primly, though Xelloss could taste sorrow from her again, this 
time with a warmly spicy touch of regret.
     Xelloss couldn't help being amused by the irony, though.  "Oh, 
dear, Filia-chan!  I guess we'll just have to live in sin!" he said 
cheerfully as he grabbed one end of the mattress and Filia took the 
other and started to put it on the bed.
     Filia _blushed_, realising the implications both of what she had 
said, when she had said that '_we_ could not get properly married,' and 
of what _Xelloss_ had just said.  "Yes, we will."  She let go, and the 
mattress dropped into place, Xelloss somehow having manage to let go at 
the same time.
     "Why don't you go take a bath, Filia-san, while I make the bed?" he
 said softly.  "I promise to do a good job, no short-sheeting you or 
anything, and I won't tie you down...unless you'd like me to..."
     "Xelloss..." she said, wondering why the mazoku was making such an 
offer to her.
     He wondered himself, but he didn't want to take the offer back.  
"Just go ahead..." he said, tasting his own emotions.  It something only
 done when either starving, and surviving to suffer the consequences of 
eating one's own emotions was unlikely, or (like now) when a mazoku was 
unsure of what his own feelings were.  To his dislike, but not surprise 
as he had somewhat expected it, the distinct flavor of love for the 
dragon was present.  _Damn_.
     Filia, not knowing what to make of Xelloss's expressions, left 
quickly.

     Filia returned to find the bed carefully and quite neatly made, and
 Xelloss already lying in it, his back to the door and her.  She quietly
 draped her robe on the back of a chair which Xelloss must have moved 
into the room from the future guest room, and slipped into the bed.  The
 sheets softly rustled as she snuggled up close to Xelloss, slipping her
 arms around his waist and enjoying the feeling of his bare skin against
 her own.
     "Xelloss-san?  Are you...are you up to doing anything before we go 
to sleep?"  Filia blushed, too shy to phrase her question in less 
euphemistic terms and feeling daring enough simply _asking_.  She not 
quite realized, before the sales clerk had asked her and Xelloss if they
 were getting married, that she could never get properly married.  She 
hadn't really wanted to accept that her only options had been to either 
remain virtuously chaste and virginal until she died or to live in sin 
should she find a mate.  Now, she had unexpectedly found herself taking 
the second option, and not knowing if she liked it or not.
     Xelloss sighed, with possibly overdramatized regret.  "No, Filia.  
I'm still recovering from having tried to mate with your floor.  I don't
 know why, either, since...I usually recover faster than this," he said,
 somewhat embarrassed.  "Maybe it's because that...guise was developed 
later than my usual one, with a little more attention to anatomic 
detail..."
     "What do you mean, Xelloss?"  Filia was curious, and not even 
trying to hide it.
     "Well..."  Xelloss thought about how to answer Filia's question.  
It would not hurt to be honest; it wasn't like the answer was a _secret_
 of the Mazoku, it just was something that couldn't easily be explained 
to beings whose form was not like theirs.  "A form other than the 
natural form of a mazoku -- the one we were created with -- needs 
infrastructure so that the outside appears right.  Without it, the outer
 surface of the secondary form would look like a low-quality golem 
that's been painted.  I took advantage of the fact that clothing can 
cover for a lack of infrastructure when I created my usual guise..."
     Filia looked at the back of his head thoughtfully.  "You must have 
spent a lot of time watching how muscles move underneath the skin in 
humans," she observed.
     Xelloss smiled.  "Well...not exactly."  _More like I used a few 
very old anatomy books..._
     Filia yawned, and nuzzled the back of his neck.  "Good night, 
Xelloss-san."
     He faked a yawn automatically.  "Good night, Filia."

     _Filia writhed in her sleep, Xelloss dodging her arms, legs, and 
tail.  Every so often she would mutter something that he was too 
distracted to try to catch.  He knew that, if he wanted to find out what
 she was saying, he would have to restrain her.  He cursed quietly._
     Xelloss knelt down beside the body of a dragon in human form.  He 
brushed the man's yellow hair towards one side, carefully looking for 
something that was apparently too big to be in a pocket, but not too big
 not to possibly be hidden under the corpse.  Xelloss's eyes, serious, 
regularly flickered away from his search to check his surroundings and 
he was clearly tense, ready to move if an opponent appeared to either 
attack it or defend himself.
     Xelloss finally finished his search.  In fact, he had finished it 
several times over, and whatever he was looking for was definitely not 
there.  He touched ragged edges of the smile that had been cut in the 
dragon's neck, his expression thoughtful, before teleporting away.
     _Xelloss lunged for Filia's wrists, and finally managed to catch 
them.  He forced them together and above her head, using what weight he 
had to get the rest of her to hold still._
     Her dream, like dreams are wont to do, shifted time and place 
suddenly and she found herself, though still only able to observe, in 
the throne room of an ancient tower that had grown a castle but 
remained, in spirit if not in reality, a tower.  It lay in a small, 
fertile valley surrounded by some of the worst terrain of a giant desert
 wasteland.  Seals, both of Black and of Holy magic, were on it to hide 
it from anybody who did not know where exactly to look for it.
     A tall, lean man who looked to be perhaps 25 and very handsomely 
so, sat in a plain stone throne in its center, looking not stiff but 
somehow like he had been born to look commanding from it in his loose, 
flowing robes, his long red hair held back by a plain iron circlet.  His
 golden eyes watched, emotionlessly, the living, solid shadows that were
 his subjects play with nearly worn out humans.
     He stood up and walked through his keep, the scenery dissolving and
 shifting as he moved until he was in an underground room of highly 
polished black marble.  In each corner was a strange-looking lamp made 
of a dark grey metal, and in the center of the room was a pillar of the 
same metal holding what looked like an exact duplicate of the jewel in 
Xelloss's staff.
     There was a name for them, she knew with the certainty of a dream.
     _Filia still twisted, and Xelloss had to control himself to keep 
from using any more force than he already was because of the risk to 
her.  Then he caught a phrase of what she was muttering in her sleep.  
"The eyes of Shabraningdo."  His eyes flew open, and he stared at her 
sleeping face._
     The dream shifted away from the man as he knelt to the jewel, and 
now she was standing in the road in front of her house.  However, her 
house was ashes, and the town itself was still burning in places.  
Those didn't draw her attention as much as what was in the remains of 
her garden.
     One of the creatures from the man's tower, a centaur with a 
monstrous canine head, sat in what had once been her flower bed.  A 
small pile of bodies lay, neatly stacked, beside him.  She recognized 
all of them: a few of her neighbors, Jillas, Grabos...and her own body. 
 Parts had been cut off from them, and there were a few bones on the 
stack.
     The thing finished cleaning the flesh from the leg bone it was 
munching on, and hit it against the nearest stone, breaking it open.  
Filia watched, feeling sick, as it contentedly sucked the marrow out.
     _Xelloss shook Filia, trying to wake her up.  Whatever she was 
dreaming had her producing a feast for him, and while he normally 
wouldn't object to being so well-fed he didn't like it right now.  If 
she really had been talking of what he *thought* she was, he needed to 
know *how* she knew about it as soon as he could._
     _Then, suddenly, her eyes flew open.  He let go of her wrists, not 
sure why he did so but knowing that was the right thing to do, and she 
wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her face against his 
shoulder.  He sat still for a few moments, recognizing the taste of her 
emotions but surprised that she'd actually cry on *his* shoulder, then 
cautiously embraced her._

+===+ +===+ +===+   +===+ +===+ +===+   +===+ +===+ +===+

     The Fire Dragon King's followers, to me at least, seem inclined 
towards placing more importance on the form than anything else in their 
worship.  Thus, I decided that they'd not believe that a proper marriage
 is possible outside of certain constraints.  As far as I can tell, the 
only iron-clad one is that they have a proper priest conduct the 
ceremony.  That he not, say, recite dirty limericks while completely 
convinced that he _is_ saying the proper ones, or even be alive, doesn't
 seem to be anywhere near as essential.
     Part of Xelloss's tasting of his own emotions is due to Irk's 
influence.  Read her stories and you'll know from which one I borrowed 
(with permission) part of that from and what part, too.
     I did not use any of the canon for the details on how mazoku make 
their alternate forms.  As far as I know, there is nothing on the 
technical aspects in the canon.  I just made up what seemed logical, and
 decided to give a reason for why Xelloss's clothes are overall so 
draped -- and he seems to be either overly-gifted, stuffing, or wearing 
a jock strap.