ORIGIN

White stared off at Caravaggio for a moment, though she nodded approvingly, breaking into a doggish smile. "Good!" She said, ears flicking cheerfully. "I'm sure Fire-Hot will forgive you."

She turned her head, briefly, for Dread's reply-- though she promptly decided that between him not being able to speak very well and being absorbed with a new shiny, he likely wouldn't get around to it anytime soon. Instead, she turned back to Caravaggio.

"Maybe," said the hybrid. "Have you ever felt sick? Have you ever eaten anything bad? I mean, um-- you get kind of sweaty and you feel gross, and sometimes either really cold or really hot, and sometimes you'll kind of cough it back up. You get a little sleepy, too, or sometimes you feel too gross to sleep. Do you feel like that?"

She tentatively sniffed at the cow a bit more, before going back to grooming him. At one point, she very gently nosed at his shoulder, affectionately, before continuing. "We could. I know there's-- OH." How could she have forgotten?!

Her brother! He was a thing that liked to help people and he could probably help Caravaggio if he was sick. He might be near her father, too, but White wasn't so sure about that. Either way, Oliver was probably the way forward.

White did not, however, say this out loud.

"Come on, we gotta go," she said, turning back towards Dread. "Will you be okay? You can keep the shinies and stuff and you can find me if you wanna get more-- but you have to say please next time."

Dread was feeling... off. The bovine's musical words were a blur to his rapidly-fogging mind, as were White's; he could barely understand a thing. Despite his great inner heat, he already felt feverish. A strange feeling of unwellness gripped him, and though he didn't understand it, he knew that he didn't like it. Everything felt wrong. Abruptly losing interest in the shiny stones, he looked to White, unable to express his misery, either verbally or through expression, which his reptilian face did not lend itself well to.

Instead, in a pathetic, moaning voice--a pained dragon huff coming along with it--he spoke as best he could.

"Hot bad," he declared. Then he turned, head hung lower than before, and shuffled along the stone. With a quiet clatter of the spines along his back, and without a single glance back to the beautiful, shiny white cow or the beautiful, shiny white bird-dog, he launched off with unsteady wingbeats back toward his ledge.

The instinct to go coil up alone, to wait this out and to get away from others, was strong. The fever was already roiling through him, the illness taking root, and he just wanted to get somewhere quiet, somewhere dark, and rest.

The cow's gaze lingered hopefully on White before she assured him the dragon would forgive him. Did he actually care, though? He almost wanted to say he didn't - but the intensity with which he pandered to White's favor convinced him otherwise. He'd rather have the dragon forgive him so as to avoid doing anything else to upset his companion. He glanced at the dragon, expecting him to agree with White's prediction and forgive him.

The dragon wasn't paying attention.

Maybe it was better off that way. He was thinking about the sickness that the bats could have imparted on him again. With a frown, he looked back at White, and then rolling his eyes up toward the ceiling, thinking. Searching deep inside of himself for that sensation. He hadn't ever been sick before, thank the cave - but he'd seen creatures that were sick, and heard of what they'd endured. Ugh, what would become of him if he got sick? Would his stomach churn, would he spill his insides? The thought alone made an awful shiver crawl up his spine, leaving him nearly gagging, which was only made worse as White continued to describe what being sick was like.

"Thankfully, no," he replied after swallowing down his disgust.

She was about to suggest something - maybe where to find her father - before something clicked and she stopped grooming him again. Caravaggio canted his head to the spot she had left, sniffing it himself. He adjusted to peer at the dragon as White invited him to come along, but the dragon had other plans.

Hot bad, he said, and dismissed himself without another word.

The cow furrowed his brow with concern. "Now, okay, that wasn't necessarily my fault," he said quickly. "I never said he was bad."