ORIGIN - The Showoff

Some days, Blight was hard to spot--sticking to his nocturnal habits, dipping stealthily in and out of the water, sometimes even shrouding himself in shadows so as better to snag his fish.

Other days...

Well, other days, he wasn't hard to spot. Other days, he dove and splashed down hard, and then rose against the pink morning orb-lights silhouetted magnificently, water glittering down like diamonds from his tattered wings. It wasn't deliberate... Well.

It was a little bit deliberate.

He loved the idea of being graceful and swift in the air; loved his nimbleness, loved letting himself fall into Leo and its beauty completely. He imagined himself, in those moments, to be one with the bay and the fish and the sea stacks--and if someone saw, well, it wasn't a show on purpose, at least. Not that he minded; he wasn't really the self-conscious type.

Right now, he was rising on another updraft, bobbing and dropping and rising again, exulting in the wind and sea and just barely short of laughing aloud. And he didn't stop there, not today. Instead, his entire body glowed a soft green-white, not unlike his eyes--if someone hadn't noticed him before, he'd sure as hell be hard to miss now.

Really, it was just a little silly, especially for a full-grown dragon.

He wasn't just showing off, though: he was, himself, on the hunt. Every drop between the updrafts left him scouring the waves for those telltale glints of silver--schools of fish that he could lunge for. But he was taking his time, scanning and flying to and fro. There was no point in rushing; he had all the time in the world.

@Glaive

Actually, there was a point in rushing. Blight did not have all the time in the world.

Something lurked in the depths below him, and it was hungry. Sharp teeth, sharp claws, sharp figure... all perfectly suited for cutting through the water like a knife through paper. Keen eyes caught every flickering shift of the water's surface above, watching for the telltale cast shadow of prey—which could very well be some fish, a kyte, some other flying thing that skimmed too close...—and scanning the darkness beneath. A kraken could provide quite the meal if it allowed itself to be caught by such a terrific beast...

... that was presently unleashing a series of bubbles in raw excitement as a huge shadow passed overhead, followed by a scattering swarm of glinting silver and black.

Pupils dilated as Glaive surged upward. Hind legs barely kicked as she propelled herself by the virtue of tail alone, and her mouth opened at the last possible second.

Her reward was a rather nice mouthful of silverlings, all impaled like kebabs on her skewer teeth as she snapped her mouth shut and broke the surface with a massive SPLOOSH! "MMMHFH!" she howled around her food by way of a victory cry, and set herself to chopping up fish-bits with her teeth and tossing them back to swallow.

Imagine her surprise, though, seeing a huge green blur in the distance, glowing in a litany of colors. "BBLLRUGHT?" Glaive spluttered, dog-paddling forward (in a failed attempt to catch up) and lifting her head from the ocean water. A massive gulp of fish that'd make anyone choke later, and she hollered again, "BLIGHT?!" Turquoise eyes squinted. "HEY! IS THAT YOU?"

Just for good measure: "IT'S GLAIVE-RHYMES-WITH-CAVE!"

@Blight

Blight jerked, midair, upon hearing his name called. Sort of. "BBLLRUGHT" wasn't exactly his name, so honestly it was more the sudden voice beneath, and behind, him that drew his attention sweeping back, his glowing eyes wide with surprise. It took him a moment, ragged wings taking him in a confused circle, to spot the brilliant splash of red at the water's surface; his recognition hit at the same time as "IT'S GLAIVE-RHYMES-WITH-CAVE!" struck his ears.

"Glaive-?" Blight blurted, blinking; and then, with more enthusiasm, "Glaive!" Wings folded, and he dipped down, a brief dive directly into the water. An urge to spark lights across his hide in a happy greeting faltered, quickly forgotten in his focus to get to her. He surfaced a few yards off, paddling to meet her, wings fanning out now across the surging surface of the bay like cloth.

"It's good to see you! -You got bigger!" he crowed, amazed and admiring. She was huge, too: bigger than him, he thought, with massive limbs and that big ol' sail, her paddle tail hefty like a crocodile's. Blight was oblivious to his own growth; he'd been hardly more than a hatchling last they'd met, himself.

It didn't really occur to him to be polite or reserved; instead his full excitement poured out. "Where've you been? HOW'VE you been!? I haven't seen you in--forever! Have you been here? I haven't seen you--I live here, now!" (And it wasn't staking a claim; he was happy to have friends here, to invite more, even, his tone open and enthusiastic.) "What are you doing now?!"

Blight was transported, in his mind: a child again, happy and splashing in the water next to his pal, without a care in the world.

@Glaive

Glaive's mouth parted in the simulacrum of a toothy grin as Blight turned around, and she was paddling forward again before he'd even hit the water.

She barely even flinched at the wave-splash of dragon hitting water at high speed, and shook her head with disbelief. Turquoise eyes creased upward as she oohed and ahhed in kind. Look at those WINGS! His shadow had been big on the water, but... one of those could just about cover her like a canopy! "You did too! You have horns now!" When her teeth snapped together, Glaive couldn't help but giggle, "And a nose about as long as mine!"

Much like an untrained and unsocialized Doodle, the spinosaur knew little of being calm with her greetings. Her entire body was vibrating as she answered, "I'm good! Fornax was getting a little quiet and lonely and I ran out of cool rocks to put in cool rock piles, so I came here following some fish!" Glaive laughed, and if only she could've blushed as she confessed, "Got stuck in a tunnel along the way, but it's okay now! I made it!"

"I didn't know you LIVED here, though!!! It's so cool!!!" She practically had to tear her eyes from her fellow fisher-dragon to gaze longingly at Leo's central island. "All the stacks and green and... it's so pretty!"

"Why didn't you tell me—" and wasn't that a strange surprise? A little crack of the voice? Glaive snapped her mouth shut, and gave off an exaggerated cough before swallowing. "Eugh, fish came up the wrong way for a second there..."

Glaive splashed a little closer, a tittering sound rumbling from her throat. "Were you just flying around just now?? Or going somewhere?" Brainwave. "Oh, no! You weren't fishing—were you?" Before Blight could even answer, she chirped, "Sorry!"

@Blight

Her enthusiasm was met and mirrored, one splashing monster before another.

'You have horns now!' "I DO!" 'And a nose about as long as mine!' To this, Blight briefly crossed his eyes, peering down his snout. He briefly wondered if a long snout was a good thing--it seemed pretty neutral, to him--but shrugged it off and cheered along anyway. "Yeah!"

She mentioned Fornax, and he brightened up, some; he couldn't remember her ever having mentioned it before, even if she had. "Fornax isn't bad! -But yeah, it's pretty empty," he agreed. He'd visited there, too, from time to time. "You got stuck? In a tunnel?" he was about to laugh at the crazy mental image, but sobered when he realized that she must've meant underwater. "Wait--underwater? There's--are there tunnels underwater? That must've been scary," he said, ghostlight eyes wide with the thought.

Her excitement, too, about Leo's beauty was at once reflected: Blight lifted his neck clear from the mild waves, peering around as he tread water. "It is, isn't it?" he answered, his voice one of admiration and almost awe. "The light gets beautiful here!" The dragon had no real terms for sunrise or sunset--he'd never seen a sun--but he struggled regardless to describe the dimming and brightening and the way it affected the bay. "Right when night comes and everything gets kinda pinkish, the clouds almost glow. And in the morning there's all this fog-! It's beautiful at night, too; everything looks kinda... blue," he finished, not quite a poet at heart; but the love for his new home was there.

The "why didn't you tell me" didn't go unnoticed, the little break in it catching his attention. He wondered for a beat what she had been about to ask--maybe that he was moving? Or how beautiful Leo was, or maybe where he'd gone-? Or why he'd never come back to see her, after that first visit? It wasn't that he hadn't gone back to Pisces; he just hadn't seen Glaive again. But now he felt bad--surely he should've sought her out? Looked for her, invited her along... He hesitated, wondering why he hadn't, but really it was just a child's oblivious nature. He hadn't ever thought to. ...If that was even what she'd been going to ask; he didn't have much more time to ponder, because she'd moved on to other questions.

Blight struggled to catch up to this new train of thought, blinking. "Huh-? Oh! Uh, I was fishing, but don't worry--I'm not that hungry! I was flying around, mostly, like-... There's not a whole lot else to do, you know? So I just sort of fly around and catch what I see. We don't usually get fish your size, though," he joked, with a nod in Glaive's direction.

His gaze glittered as he considered whether to go back to her almost-asked question, but she'd changed the subject, so he sort've sidestepped onto a parallel path. "Do you wanna live here, too?" (And here he realized his mind had slipped, by the habit of a single meeting, back into a kid's phrasing and cheer. Whoops.) He cleared his throat, himself, struggling to seem a little more mature. "I mean, ahh--there's plenty of space. My Dad-Dad lives here, and my Dad's here sometimes. I mean-" Blight was repeating himself, but didn't notice, his head curving back now to peer up at the sea stack that Dread and he tended to share. He squinted at it. "...I dunno if you can get up to our home, but uhh--I can hang out with you! In Leo! We could fish together! Oh, have you seen the caves, the--Forge-place? And there's birds that lay eggs on the cliffs! They're really cool," he confided, like it was some sort of deep cave secret.

Other ideas came and went--they could watch the lights change, together, at morning and at night. They could listen to the sounds shift from birdsong to crickets. They could tuck into a den and laugh and talk while a storm lit up the sky outside. But all that sounded pretty stupid to say; so Blight just offered, "We could be friends, here!" And then he blinked, and added hastily, "Or--if you still live somewhere else, I can visit you there-? If that's okay."

@Glaive

"It wasn't that bad, I promise," Glaive was quick to assure, wanting those wide, worried eyes to go away right that instant, "I can make myself all slimy and breathe underwater. Like the fish! It was just a little hang-up." Sure, it'd lasted five minutes, but... she could hold her breath for way longer; even if she'd been sputtering and blubbering with shock. The spinosaurus couldn't suppress the slightly nervous laugh accenting her words, "I'll take the land route next time though."

Haha. Yeah.

Whether or not her assurances had banished Blight's fretting, he was launching into a whole spiel about Leo's lights; and Glaive, who had never read a single piece of Ocean Vuong in her life, was entranced. Already, the dawning glow of orblights had seemed so pleasant—casting the whole place in a warm contrast to the pearlescent blue below. Her own snout was looking rather pinkish, like a nice blush had overtaken it. She craned her neck up, trying (and failing) to catch her reflection in the choppy water surface. A shame, because she wanted to see how those baby blues of hers looked in the light (while also being totally oblivious to the possible romance of it all.)

Glaive giggled at her friend's little joke, of course, and then... a thought! "O-oh, flying!! I wa—" Oh, no, I'm interrupting— "sorry, you first!" She tossed her snout up, accidentally flicking a little water at Blight's face as she went. (Hopefully he wouldn't take it as a threat of splash war, because this was a really nice conversation they were having and she'd really really really missed ~~him~~ this!)

There was no way to describe her expression other than lighting up when an offer to move in was made.

"I'd love to! I can go back to Fornax whenever, but—" beneath the surface, her claws were fidgeting and pressing against one another, "I was gonna ask if it'd be okay if I stay here too! I wanna see this place at night and hang out with you and whoever else." Turquoise eyes looked a little more than glassy as she turned her gaze upward, to Blight's face. "I-I mean, if you and your Dad and Dad-Dad are here, that's three more than at ho—my last home!"

Really jumping the gun there, aren't you?

"I'd really like to see all of that. Even where you and your Dad-Dad live. I think, I think I could get up there!" And at that, the spinosaurus squeezed her eyes shut with such an intensity that you'd think she was constipated. Her tear ducts bloomed with a faint, blue glow, and with that came fluttering wisps and arcs of a strange sort of energy. Aquamarine feathers—stylized in their construction, not at all intending to be realistic-looking—fanned out at her shoulders, wide and broad like the wings of an albatross.

Glaive peeled one eye open, as if hesitant to even investigate her own wings situation, before gaping in a toothy grin. "Look!! I have wings—sometimes! Since I'm living here, you could teach me how to use them! I've tried but..." Bright eyes averted sheepishly. "Um, don't worry about my past attempts at flying! I can start fresh and learn it, I promise."

Boom. Puppy-eyes spinosaurus. An eager student awaiting the approval of a teacher.

@Blight

"Slimy?!" Blight cried, half-disgusted, half-amused, all childlike. "Ohh!"--but this time it would've been him interrupting, so he held that thought, eyes springing wide.

But when Glaive showed off her wings, he got very excited indeed. "You got WINGS?! That's so cool! I got gills--I was gonna say--I'll tell you all about it. Not right this second, but some time! I got gills from a Master! I can breathe underwater, so we could go deep down together maybe, and explore, and then fly up high too! I'll teach you everything I know and maybe you can teach me how to breathe underwater right-? It'll be fun!" It really seemed, for the moment, that the whole world was open to them. The highest peaks, the deepest seas--they could explore them both. And land, too, which was okay, he guessed.

"That sounds great, though--definitely stay!" The dragon's tone was encouraging, his gaze admiring as he looked over the shining wings again. "So those are--magic? Is it dangerous to fly too high, like--can they fall off, or anything?"

And then, playful, hopeful, he added: "Do you want to do anything?"

Exploring, maybe? Seeing his home, or the bird's nests, or the forge, or checking out the ocean depths--he didn't mind; suddenly everything seemed bright with potential, full of adventure, fun, and companionship. Joyful, he eyed her, and felt like he should probably express that--somehow. So, ever the awkward friend, he tried and came out with: "Glaive, uhh--it's good to see you again." A half-confused phrase, and one he'd already said a few moments ago, but... he meant it.

@Glaive