ORIGIN - Ornaments Neatly Ordered, Lovingly Admired

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Rated M for Mature - Foul Language

The hybrid lay quietly content, flat on her chest, a small pile of stones and scrap before her. She felt relatively safe; the wall was quite away from the busier center of Monoceros, and she was half-shaded by the platforms above. That wasn't to say she wasn't visible--she was, particularly with her plumage and the pile of objects before her--but at least others didn't often come out this way.

Of course, that made her rather easier to notice if they did.

She nudged one of the armor scraps with a pointed beak. She still wasn't sure what she could do with these things, but practicing her newfound magic helped her pass the time, at least.

The armor scrap began to flicker as she concentrated--taking on a faint and glimmering hue, a soft blue glow. She gave a little chirp of pleasure, and pushed this one gently into the "good" pile with the other glowing things. Some glimmered a soft gold, others blue. There were only six or seven of these; the rest of the things--stones, sticks and bits of metal--were still dull and light-less.

"Good," she said to herself, quietly encouraging.

This--this was a good magic to have. Something creative, something that added to the world, instead of simply destroying and taking from it.

Something about that was therapeutic, to her.

@Siren

Serendipity likely wouldn't have noticed Azure at all if she were just making small, non-glowing trinkets. It was the lights that drew her attention to the hybrid, drawing her right out of her work. She'd been on her way to the forge with a shortsword hauled behind her, scraping noisily against the ground. It was rusty, but not for long, probably.

Most people might have just continued on their own business.

Not Siren.

Still dragging the blade behind her, she skittered over like a little grinning rat, watching the hybrid touch scrap armour and make it glow like the lights on the wall, her ears lifted high. "You're making stuff!" She said, very cheerfully. "You're making them shiny."

She didn't get much closer, but she did plonk down right there, about ten feet away from Azure. "How are you doing it? Can you do more? Can I see?"

@Azure

Azure jerked in surprise at the voice, blinking and turning to peer up. She relaxed from her sudden tense posture upon seeing the small size of her visitor--a strangely-shaped one, to be sure, and draped in weird cloth, but she seemed friendly enough.

"Huh!? -What--yeah. Yeah, I am," she answered a little lamely, tilting her head to peer down at her work. "Hey, slow down, right? Yeah, I can do more. It's magic--makes things glow. Uhh."

She looked down again, once more touching her beak to a stone--this time a smooth, translucent rock she'd found. Azure was a little on edge with the sudden audience, but she concentrated nonetheless--and the rock promptly cracked in two, turning jet black. "That wasn't--that was a bad rock," she said hastily, pushing it away with her beak.

She then turned, blinking blue eyes at Siren. "...Some of them are bad. They don't. Work right. What's your name?" she went on, desperately hoping to change the topic.

@Siren

Serendipity hadn't been told to slow down before, and it almost caught her a little off-guard. She paused, blinking, and was quiet for a few beats as Azure bent her head down, splitting open a rock and turning it black. Her mouth dropped.

It seemed like the hybrid didn't want it-- she was explaining that some rocks are bad and was pushing it away. Siren set the sword down and went for both halves of the rock, looking at them both. "It's not totally bad," she reasoned gently. "You can turn these into grindstones and make things a lot prettier. Uhh."

Slow down, she tried to remind herself, taking a second to pause before she gestured to the rusted sword, gesturing to the flakes of brown-red. "You can use it to scrape these bits off, and then it'll be real shiny and pretty," she explained.

She did not, however, pursue the topic much longer. "I'm Sirendippity," she said, slurring through elongated canines. "Or just Siren. Or Dip. Some gembounds have a bad time saying it. What's your name?"

@Azure

Azure eyed it all, briefly. She extended out a black forelimb, and gently nudged the two pieces of shattered stone slightly closer to this--Siren? Dip? Dip sounded good.

"Hey, Dip. You can keep 'em. I'm Azure." For a moment she looked over the rusted iron--and then over the cloth draping Dip's body. "What's that stuff you got all over you?" she asked, curious. And then--"You want me to glow it for you?"

The idea of glowing cloth sure sounded cool. Was it someone's fur? Woven grass, maybe? It looked weird, to her, and she wasn't sure why Dip was wearing it. Maybe being without fur or feathers--except on her head?--was cold. But Monoceros was a pretty hot cave; she found it hard to imagine being cold, in here. In fact--"Aren't you hot?" she asked, curiously. Her own feathers necessitated a dip in the river now and then--and they were black, to boot, for the most part. The place usually felt like an oven, to her. But it was remote, and that was always good.

@Siren

Serendipity grinned good-naturedly, taking the stones and stuffing them away into a satchel with a few nods. "Azure's a pretty name," she said, and then extended a hand out. "Gimme your claw? Somebody said this a Special Greeting for people with hands but I don't see why everyone shouldn't be able to do it."

Because hands were superior, allegedly, but Siren was unsure if she really believed that.

She looked down at her clothes, and then back up. "These are things I found in the tunnel outside. Uh," she considered. She did feel pretty warm most times, but-- "I mean, yeah, but the other caves are kinda super cold and I don't have any fur or feathers or anything. Uhh. It's really hot here, but the wind tosses little rocks and sand and dust about and my skin is unprotected so it really hurts."

She showed her arm in example, mauve and flecked gold. Her hands were naturally calloused, and her feet were the same from walking around barefoot, but the rest of her was very soft and vulnerable to scratches whenever the wind decided to pelt her.

She looked back at the sword, considered, and then shook her head. "No, uh, it could be a lot shinier which might make it look cooler? I have, uh," She extended her carving knife forward, hilt-first to Azure. It was shiny, and sharp-- freshly-repaired with a new hilt. "I fixed it up myself. What do you think?"

@Azure

Azure grinned, first, at the compliment--or rather, she tried to. She had a beak now, she kept forgetting, and the corners just sorted of twisted a little. ...Right, that's gonna take some getting used to.

"Thanks," was all she said, though, and then nearly blurted "I picked it myself." What a fucking stupid thing to say, she berated herself mentally--even while offering out her forelimb, bemused.

At Dip's explanation of the whole clothes thing, Azure's eyes widened in revelation. "Oooh, that makes sense. Yeah, you look kinda--soft? I can guess all the rocks and sand and shit aren't too nice. They hurt my eyes, sometimes," she agreed. "And--what do I think of it? Uhh, it looks... pointy, I guess? What's it for?" she asked, all the while reaching out her beak to touch it.

The whole thing lit with a soft blue glow--oddly stronger at the hilt, where her beak made contact. It was as if her spell had kinda faded halfway down, but it still gave off light, at least. Just... oddly. "There," she declared. "Is that good?"

Some part of her felt oddly proud. Sure, the glow didn't really do anything--it wasn't functional, really, unless someone needed to light up what they were cutting. But it was creation, nonetheless--she'd done that, and someone else thought it was cool. And that was cool.

@Siren

Siren had no idea what Azure was trying to do with her bird-face but she decided it was nothing particularly bad or harmful, and nodded along. "Yeah, uhh, I'm kinda squishy in places?" She said, taking Azure's talon carefully in both hands.

She stuck her tongue out, concentrating, remembering, and gently shook the limb up and down before letting go. "It's called a handshake," she explained. "It's special? I think. It's fun." She nodded very knowingly.

The child spent a moment looking over the blade. "It's called a knife. Uhh. I don't have, like, claws? Or sharp teeth or a beak or anything, so I gotta use it to like, hunt and eat and stuff. I mostly use magic to hunt, though, and then I like-- peel all the fur off rats to eat it, because the fur's really gross and makes me choke."

She fell silent to watch Azure cast magic onto the knife, eyes growing wide with awe. "Ooh," she murmured very quietly, leaning in close. "It's real good. It's so cool!" Serendipity grinned again, pulling the knife away and holding it in a fist. The light shone onto her own hand, tinging it cerulean.

Manners. "Thank you!" She said, tucking it away before someone got accidentally stabbed. "You should do something with the stuff you make, you know? You can give them to people in exchange for other stuff or something."

@Azure

The handshake was... well. It was certainly something. Azure retracted her limb, after the fact, and briefly looked it over--but it didn't look any different.

Huh.

Azure then got busy studying Siren's hands--wondering about claws, and all that. Maybe she could make something that'd let her cut stuff? Like... I don't know, something to put on her hands that had its own claws? Stone, or metal? But before she could get very far with this thought, Siren'd spoken further. She blinked up, trying to hone back in on what was being said, and what she'd missed.

"...Trade? Oh, I don't know, I don't know anything else I'd need," she mused, thoughtfully.

All that being said...

She leaned out, pulling another stone over to her. This one she concentrated on more closely--and this one didn't start glowing.

But after she'd finished--or, rather, after she thought she'd finished--a test-touch had no result. Nothing happened. She sighed; the magic had failed. "I've got this... other magic, too. So--I can try and show you if it lets me," Azure went on sullenly. "But like... okay, so that one makes things glow? But this--it makes stuff kinda zap you if yo touch it. I don't know what use that could be, though. Maybe to protect stuff you don't want touched," she reasoned. Though she'd never figured out how to take the electrical charge back out again, bar shocking oneself a few times.

@Siren

Siren considered this predicament for a very long moment, rubbing her fingers against her chin. "Some people like shinies," she suggested. By 'some people,' of course, she meant Dread. "There's, uh, armour? Stuff that'll like, give you protection if anybody were gonna attack you."

She watched the new stone that Azure was touching-- but nothing seemed to be happening to it. At least it wasn't going black, this time. She listened, ear flicking, and then perked up with a sharp "oh!" She leaned back and planted her hand against the ground, brow furrowing.

But-- nothing happened. She furrowed her brow further.

"Maybe this is a bad place for magic?" She suggested, shrugging. "I, uh, can sometimes summon shiny rocks and stuff and change their shape and stuff but it doesn't really seem to be working."

There was a short pause. "I can make fire, too. And explode small rocks. Uh. I can find gemstones, too, but they're usually, uh-- not like our gemstones? Just-- y'know. Empty, I guess."

For a moment, Siren rocked back and forth, her tail thumping hollowly, absent-mindedly, against the cave floor. "Magic is weird," she concluded.

@Azure

Pages: 1 2 3 4