ORIGIN

Haven sniffed and dropped Electrum's tail and walked forward, nose brushing his hide to judge where she herself was standing, and noted his fins flaring up weirdly.

"... What are you doing?", she asked, her long tail wagging back and forth behind her in amusement, "Waterfall? Is that what that crashing is? Sounds scary... but we can check it out!"

Haven went to answer his question about her chrysalis before she heard it collapse in on itself and just gestured towards it before grinning at Electrum happily, her mouth a weird mess of teeth. Some were external, like her long sabertooth fangs, which were the same color as her grey skin, but the rest of her teeth were pearly white and surprisingly small. Baby teeth, most likely.

"I want to fly,", she said matter-of-factly, before trotting off a few feet away, head bobbing as the sensitive spines on her back wiggled to try and gauge where she was.

Wiggling her bum, she catapulted off the ground, flapping down powerfully and... crashing to the ground. Welp.

I mean, it made sense. Her wings were still wrinkly and grey, nowhere near stiff enough to sustain flight for even a short period.

Yet, she still got up, a sense of anergia around her as she sat down, clearly upset about her failure, and embarrassed.

@Electrum

Electrum

As Haven lets go of his tail and noses along his side, he can feel something hot color his face, and make his fins and ears flush gold,

He's embarrassed, caught out looking like a dumbass, but he tries his best to play it off, shaking himself solidly to finally be able to lay his fins flat. "Just figuring out my limits", is his tense reply, and he takes a deep breath - trying to see if he can smell or see anything else.

"I'd need a better view to see if there's anything else interesting, but yeah... a waterfall. That loud, constant noise? That's that. Looks terrifying, it's so big- but it can't hurt us, I don't think."

A crumpling crunch, he watches her chrysalis mostly collapse, and so he turns to watch her again- she's very interesting, external and internal teeth, and he wonders why they hatched together precisely. They don't seem anything alike- but maybe someone put them there? Who knows. She's made of plates and.. apparently not as graceful, but he supposes he has no room to judge. They're new, anyway.

Flop...

Electrum has to hold back a snort at her attempt to get off the ground- that's part of the reason he'd insisted on them resting, and not exactly hunting- he didn't want to get hurt (or make a fool of himself), but he supposes a quick experiment can't hurt.

He seriously considers using his magic on Haven- to see what it does to another Gembound, but he decides against it. The navy dragonet turns his focus inwards, again, and pulls- hoping to psych himself up, like he has calmed himself down.

Almost skipping a beat- at least that's how it feels, when his heart rate picks up suddenly and sends a mild flush of energy into is body. He's probably going to regret it later, but right now-

"Hey, we're new. I doubt we're gonna be able to get off the ground just yet. I probably can't get off the ground either."

@Haven (I forgot to tag you I'm sorry)

Haven sniffled and shook her head before standing again and shaking herself off, "Yeah..."

She shook herself out and stretched, claws scraping gently against the rock as her back arched and her tail curled up a few times before she shook herself out and stood tall again.

"Okay!", she chirped, and faced the waterfall, "... Waterfall, huh? You think that means we could find something to drink?"

Of course, she wanted to be able to judge what was around, but with her lack of eyesight, that wasn't really an option for her, so she hunkered down and focused on what was important. Food, shelter, and potable water. The water being down below, and the most important of all three of those things.

"You find somewhere high,", she said, "I shouldn't be doing anything like that, since, you know, it's kind of useless with me not able to see, or able to judge what's in front of me. At least not until I can figure out my nose thingy."

Haven sniffed around and got to the edge of the ledge they were on, and waved her head up and down, trying to judge how high they were based on the sound of the water hitting the small lake below it. She could tell there was water beneath them, so she made her way around the cliff face until she found a ledge facing land below. The echoes sounded different, she noted, the rock bouncing sound off way more easily than the water did.

She reached a clawed hand down and clung to the rock face, and lowered herself down bit by bit, before letting her rear fall so she could hang on easier, tail hanging down so she could feel the ground when she got close to it.

"I'll meet you down here!", she called out, and quickly started to head towards the lake and the water. Finding food would come next.

@Electrum

Electrum

"Hey, I've got eyes, and you've got your nose and scales. We can make a good team," He argues, feeling a little bit guilty that he can't help the other calm down. His... he doesn't have a word for the other dragonet yet, other than Other. But this is his other. His.

This is complicated. Feelings are complicated and quite frankly he doesn't want to think about it, and so he shakes himself again and really looks around. "I feel like we should be able to, I mean, the water looks clear... Ish? In the fall. It's white but I don't know if that's good or bad yet."

As Haven bids farewell, Electrum has an idea. A dumb idea. But, he's a show off, and he wants to know if he can fly better since he's got eyes.

So, he flexes his wings and fins, giving himself a bit of a running start as he tries to just... get up the nerve to open them and float, or something, but he skitter-slide-crashes his way down the rocky slope instead- landing in a heap again. He has a sinking feeling that feeling like a tossed floppy thing is going yo be a staple of the next few weeks, and he waits for Haven at the bottom of their little ridge with a sharp frown and a very badly bruised ego.

Nevermind the rest of him.

@Haven

Haven paused in her climbing as she heard Electrum tumble down to the ground below instead, and wiggled her tail a bit before jumping down herself and scuttling over, "Are you okay?! That sounded bad- did you hurt yourself on the rocks?"

She rubbed her nose over his side, snuffling gently, before lifting one of his wings to nose over it, "You have to be careful- if we get hurt there's no one to help us!"

She deemed him alright and trotted to the water, stopping a few feet away, head bobbing up and down. She took a few steps forward and lowered her head, sniffing at the surface before sticking her head in and yanking it back out, sputtering.

"It's cold!!", she exclaimed with a yelp and shook her head out before seeming to glare at the water. She dipped her nose in first and flattened her head a bit, taking big gulps of water before raising her head and shaking it.

"... Moving water,", she said, "Animals and little things don't like moving water, I don't think. I sure wouldn't. It should be okay to drink."

@Electrum

Electrum

"I'll be fine," the navy dragon grumps, "and I'm well aware... I just had to prove a point." Electrum forces himself to his feet with a grimace, and loses his balance when he other noses up his side and under his wing.

Flank hitting the stone with a thump, he crinkles his snout in irritation before twisting his tail and using that limb as leverage to force himself up once more, his scales rasping eerily on the hard ground. Making his way after his compatriot, he squints at the water-

"It's cold!"

-and barely flinching as the water droplets splatter against his neck.

With the way he's scrutinizing the water, one would assume he could be trying to pick it apart down to molecular level, but he takes one final glance before sticking his head under the surface as well.

The sharp cold makes him open his mouth, but he manages not to breathe in, and he takes a gulp. The sensation reminds him of his magic, almost... not quite, but the alarming factor is there, and so instinct forces open his eyes and he looks around and down... down... down...

Electrum jerks his head out of the water with a spluttering "Nope!" and he takes a few steps back from the edge, heart speeding up as his mind puts flashing teeth just out of sight in the darkness. "We are NOT going swimming until we are bigger than everything else," He announces, magic reacting this time on instinct to the flushing warmth and gold he knows is bleeding into his ears and up his flared fins.

The relief is almost immediate, and he can feel the heat fade from his body as his heart rate quickly drops, helping him calm his thoughts, and he makes his way back to Haven's side, laying his tail across theirs. "There's... nothing there under the water. There's no ground."


@Haven

Haven's head reared as she listened to Electrum panic, wondering if she should help him or not.

"... Ah. Well, no swimming,", she confirmed, and wrapped her tail more tightly around Electrum's.

She stood on her hind legs and peered around, humming softly before dropping down onto her feet again, "Why don't we find something to eat?"

Haven lowered her head to the ground and turned her head towards Electrum, "What should we do? Try to hunt?"

Maybe. It sounded like a good idea, at least. She snorted and walked forward, keeping their tails together so they didn't get separated.

"You sound weird, by the way,", she said, "Like... you sound like stone."

She tapped a claw against his hide, making a clicking sound not unlike the stone beneath them, "Are you made of stone? That would be cool... Stone's a cool name."

Haven wagged her tail, making both of their tails move, and perked up, "Ooh~! What about Stag! Like Stalagmite! Or uh... Sky! Because we can fly- or uh, can't fly. Yet, that is!"

She flashed another toothy grin at him, awful happy about her name choices.

@Electrum

Electrum

He hums and pops up to his back legs as well, not knowing the two of them look like very slithery meerkats before they both drop back to the floor. "Hunting seems to be the best way to get food, unless you can eat the green stuff way over there... but we've got to find something to catch first. The other pools around should have something near them, right? But we need to make sure it doesn't talk like us." Some instinct pulling at the back of his mind tells him to definitely make sure of that last part, and the eerie chill he gets from imagining that he might be mistaken for a snack makes him deeply uncomfortable.

"Stone, huh..." he has his tail rasp along the ground as he considers his scales, ears flickering back and forth at the noise and the quiet but familiar clicking tap on his side. "I'm not stone, I'm not cold." He says with relative confidence, and he pokes at Haven to see what they feel like, using his tail to guide the other near him and away from sharper stones in their path, starting to lead the both of them across the cave towards the pools. "But like I said. I'm something new. We both are. I want a new name, I'll know it when I think it."

He then snorts a little bit in irritation. "Names are hard, you're lucky you knew yours so quickly."

@Haven

"Something that doesn't talk,", she repeated, humming softly, "Well let's see what we can find, there's something over there that smells tasty. And I knew right away. 'Hey'! Like Hey-ven. My name's a greeting when you say it! And we protect each other. So I'm like your safe haven."

Haven trotted towards it, before sinking onto her belly and poking Electrum, nose facing whatever was in front of them, "Let's catch it and then ask what it is."

Her butt wiggled and she darted forward, mouth open and claws extended.

Caught! She grabbed it in her teeth, not biting down to kill, just to restrain. Obviously she couldn't see what it looked like, but it squirmed and squeaked, and it was big enough for the both of them. Fat, too, hence why it probably didn't run away.

Haven turned and faced Electrum, and plopped the creature down, pinning it with a claw, "Ask it something!"

@Electrum

Electrum

Protect each other.. and a greeting... huh. I hadn't thought of that. But it suits the other, for now. We both have time to change, and grow.

"Something tasty..." he can't say he smells anything other than wetness and the stone he sounds like, but he will trust the other, taking some steps after as they leave to hunt, and come back with... actually something. Huh. "Huh. Well I uh... I feel like it'd be … talking if it could. Right? So it's not like we can ask what it is..." Which is a good thing, honestly, but he didn't know what he was looking at.

"You've got your claws on it, why don't you kill it then? If you don't want to I can," he sighs, and leans his head down to sniff at it before pulling away again, and curling his tail up next to him as if to strike.

Focusing his magic on the creature, he tries to slow it's heartbeat to stop- not that he knew that wasn't possible this way, but still, he tries. It of course, fails, and his magic buckles and fizzles with a small knockback at himself, his heartbeat slowing more than he had done to himself in the past- making him slightly lightheaded in the process. Thankfully, it was a small burst, and his heartrate picks back up after only a few seconds... but he still did NOT like that thank you.

@Haven