ORIGIN

The young dragon clambered along the ground in a circle outside the wagon, wing-walking to get a look at it from all angles. Tattered fins rose and fell as he peered at this wheel, then that axle.

His head popped out, expression bright, as Dip spoke.

"Dread is Dad-Dad!" he cried, excitedly--"You KNOW him?! -He was a KID?" Blight paused.

This was impossible for him to imagine; he imagined Svartis instead, still enormous, black, but (obviously) younger. But a kid-?! "Dad is Dad-Dad's kid already!" he explained, as if that somehow made sense. And then, half to Azure and her insistence that he not burn things; "I don't do fire. Dad-Dad does fire. He didn't burn an Orion, and Dad does ICE. I do, um." He paused, sat back, and blinked unevenly as he tried to focus on his magic.

The little dragon's skin seemed to slick, a little, and almost immediately--and as if out of nowhere--there was a quiet buzzing. A single black fly flew to his side, and landed on him. Then another, and another, until a small cloud of them were buzzing around him. This was--new, but Blight decided it was perfectly correct and probably what he'd intended, and looked up at the two of them. "I make sick. Like that," he explained.

The illness showed no signs of leaving him, or rather, the sticky film and the bugs, at least; and he looked to Dip again. "I wanna meet Glory. He made Dad-Dad rings! Gold ones! I want him to make me a silver one."

Azure relaxed, by degrees, particularly when it became clear that the dragon was both harmless and incompetent. Rather than blowing fire, he apparently attracted flies, which... she really could not see the danger in. Still, she stayed warily a few yards off, looking between him, Dip, and the wagon. Her head dropped low to inspect the wheels, and the axles.

After a moment, she looked up, blinking.

"Oooh," she said, (mis)understanding dawning on her. Oh, and the spokes! "Those long pieces come out of the wheel and walk?" she hazarded. "So... when you pull it, those round pieces go back and forth? They walk it for you--that must take a lot of the weight," she admired, nodding knowledgably. She could just see it: the axles switching back and forth, the wheels jerking to and fro-...

"I could probably pretty it up a little, if you want. Decorate it with the glow dust and whatnot, maybe some shiny stones, some flowers? But only if you want," Azure added, with a little shrug.

As she straightened, she looked closely at Dip. Her friend had spent a lot of time going back and forth, and working; she doubted she'd slept at all for the better part of a day and a half. "...You should get some rest, Dip," she suggested. "Do you want me to get you some food? -I could make you a banana?" she offered.

Serendipity watched the flies gather around the little dragon. Gross. Not like Dread's magic at all, either, in fact-- his other parent must have been capable of doing it, assuming he was like Azure, and not like Dip, who just grew out of the wall with no blood relatives.

"Oh no, I was the kid," she decided to correct, wishing to move past the flies and never think of it again. "Dread was like, hugelarge. He took me flying around Monoceros, though." He'd been pretty nice, in fact-- it was a shame Azure kept having terrible experiences with other dragons.

Speaking of Azure, Dip turned her head to watch her for a very long moment, quiet. "Mmmmmnno," the humanoid eventually hummed. She didn't want to be mean, or make Azure feel stupid, however-- but she couldn't quite grip how she came to this conclusion. Instead, she went to kneel by one of the wheels, gesturing underneath the wagon. "They're attached to these bits, right. And when it's pulled, this part--" she slapped the wheel like the roof of a car "--starts to roll, and because it's connected here--" she jiggled the axle "--which is connected to this--" she slapped the floor of the wagon, too "--it moves the whole thing."

Hopefully this was a bit clearer to her-- because Dip could not think of a simpler example for the life of her.

"Oh, yeah," she agreed, pushing up with a nod. "We could both decorate it, sometime-- I wanna sleep before doing any more work today but maybe tomorrow we could spend the day decorating it and making it look pretty. It's sort of, uh. Sad-looking right now." She eyed it a little more critically-- but she fought back against trying to plan too much out right now.

Though, her vow not to work any more today was quickly broken by Blight's final words. She scoffed, loudly, shaking her head. "I could make you silver rings better than anything Glory could put out," she said. Serendipity wasn't very competitive by nature but she was almost certain she could be a better blacksmith than anyone else. "I'm gonna make your dad rings, too, at some point."

She turned for the den again-- "you don't have to but a banana would be nice" --and went rifling through the junk again. She had to make a chest like the Collector had; add that one a little higher than Dread's rings to the list, too.

She pulled out a hunk of shiny, silver metal. It might have belonged to the end of a flail, once. It was a little dirty but parts of it still shone-- it must have been recently discarded, because it didn't seem rusty at all. She turned, beckoning for Blight, showing him. "I can make it outta this."

Blight mostly ignored the technical explanations, and the confused look on the black hybrid's face. Instead, he was bouncing over to stare up, wide-eyed, at Dip, past the cloud of blackflies buzzing around him.

Now, it should be noted that the young dragon's voice was still relatively high-pitched; there was no bass thrum to it yet, none whatsoever. Yet as he spoke, now, his voice still cracked, seeming to squeak up an octave mid-word in excitemen. "You can?!"

He followed her like a dog, ignoring her conversation with Azure in favor of pushing in too close, sniffing at her pile of junk, and just generally getting underfoot--until she'd pulled out the partially-tarnished silver. And at Azure's words, he bristled, a little, and blinked sharply to Dip.

"WAIT! I can do bananas!" he protested, and it seemed more desperate than competetive. He squinted, and strained, and nothing happened, and he looked up at Dip in what looked like near-panic, eyes switching back and forth from her face to the lump of silver. "If I can't do it, how can I pay!?"

...as if a banana was fair trade, in any world, for a blacksmith's work.

Azure leaned down again, peering closely at the wheels and axles as Dip explained. ...Okay, so the spokes didn't come out and walk; but she still couldn't quite figure out how the parts could be connected, yet still allow for movement. She hesitated, but rather than press the topic (which seemed to be moving on, in any case) she pushed up and clicked along behind the two.

"Tomorrow sounds good, yeah," she responded amiably. She wasn't too sure about the cloud of flies, and she kept some distance from Blight. She didn't have much of a sense of smell, but she couldn't imagine that it was healthy. Plus, he'd called it "sick," so... there was that.

At Blight's attempt to create a banana (and his immediate failure) Azure snorted, a little. She formed her own, a brief sparkle of light announcing its arrival, and pushed it toward Blight. "There, now you can pay her," she said, her tone friendly. There was still that lingering sense of horror at all the crap that had happened today, but so far the dragon seemed friendly enough. She was still tense around him, but... he could be worse.

Azure looked at Dip, even as Blight cheerfully offered the banana up. "I mean, I think she's pretty tired, though? Dip, you don't have to do this today. If he lives here, you can sleep, you know. I'm sure he can just--come back tomorrow?" Her brow furrowed. She knew how long some of this sometimes could take--metal-working alone; the hammering, the sanding, the engraving, let alone trying to fit it to a specific customer.

Then she squinted at Blight, a sudden thought striking her. "Anyway, as soon as he grows a little it'll be too small, won't it? Though I guess you could just... move it farther down the spike or wherever he's gonna wear it."

Serendipity had to wade through Blight, before she decided she had enough of him seemingly intentionally trying to get under her feet, which were aching enough from all the walking she'd done today. She leant down and scooped him up, depositing on the stone work table.

"Can you, uh, get rid of those flies while we're in the den, please?" She asked mid-carry, craning her head back a bit to avoid a blackfly. He was slimy, too-- Dip's hands were as gross as they'd ever been. She'd touch more oily slick shit than she ever had today than she ever had in her life.

She went for the silver ball, again-- and then realised her mistake. She started to try and wipe it off and then suddenly, somehow, there was water forming in her hands. This was new. Serendipity chose to act as if this was a very normal thing to happen as she cleaned the BlightGunk off her hands and smeared the dirt off the ragged ball.

"That, uhh, might be a better idea," she admitted to Azure. "Unless you wanna wear a ring on your feet when you get big, Blight? Your dad-dad is so big he walks into a room and his ass walks in five minutes later, so you'd either need to wait or adjust it later, somehow."

Dip eyed the forge, and then stuck her hand in there without flinching, depositing the metal in there. Her damp hands hissed and steamed a little-- but they were burnt and calloused enough already. Withstanding heat had become commonplace for her. "Come back in a couple of days and I'll get something sorted, yeah? This'll be melted by then so I can make it into a ring."

Then, she went for the banana, picking it up and peeling it. "Bring Dread too, maybe. It'd be nice to see him and get him measured for the rings." It'd be interesting to see if he'd grown any larger since they met, too. Or maybe he shrunk. That'd be funny.

"Don't worry about paying, either. It's a gift."

Blight considered.

"I don't KNOW if I can make them go away?" he lamented, turning and snapping halfheartedly at one.

This did not, in fact, help. He could feel the slimy bacteria coating him.

"I wanted? To make all this stuff turn into a bug? And send it after the big jerk who beat up Dad? But it didn't work but now maybe that I have all this it'll work and then the flies will go away and the jerk will..." Blight hunched over, squinting in concentration.

It sort of looked like he was straining to defecate, but... he was not. "-Get sick but it isn't working," he lamented.

The little dragon didn't seem to really mind having been picked up, bar a brief, kicking struggle; now he hopped down and bounded outside. "I'll come back. I'll figure it out. Maybe you can put it on the horn and if the horn gets bigger I can just move it back! Or maybe you can put it through the horn! -But that might hurt. Bye!" he added, and abruptly--without any more warning whatsoever--took flight.

The sound of his wingbeats receded--and then returned, and a moment later he landed again in a scuffle of dust just outside, the hum of flies returning with him.

"I'll come back! For the ring! -I'll bring Dad-Dad!" he added--and then took off again.

Azure peered curiously--and then a little worriedly--from the doorway as Dip's hands just... spewed water. That'd never happened before, at least in her memory, and she hoped that Dip hadn't gotten sick by touching the strange little dragon.

It was only after he left--twice--that she spoke, looking to her friend.

"...You wanna get some rest, sis?" she asked, tired humor in her own voice. She hadn't wanted to be here again, so soon, not with the dark shape that had appeared in the corner--and the den only had one way out. "I can sleep close by, make sure the wagon doesn't like, come in and try to eat us in the middle of the night, or something."

She glanced back out again. She wasn't entirely sure that inviting the dragons here was wise, but... Dip knew them, and she'd said they were nice. Anyway, maybe it was better to have a dragon if black shit was gonna start appearing in corners and whispering "kill her" on the reg.

Serendipity listened to Blight as she slowly bit into her banana, chewing. She was still chewing by the time he left, came back, and left again. "Bye," she offered, muffled, and then swallowed.

Her skin began to glitter underneath her clothes, outlining the shape of her legs and torso beneath the cloth. "You should maybe get some rest as well," she said, blinking over. "The wagon won't move on it's own." She was also, incidentally, very confident about this particular snippet. Moving on its own would be too easy, she'd need to get someone tough to pull it.

She crammed more banana into her mouth, chewing. "You wanna move your bed closer to mine?" She asked, turning to sit back down onto the pile of blankets. It wasn't as satisfying as crawling in there after a long walk, but it was still pretty good.

Dip broke off a piece of banana to shove more in there, still chewing her previous bite. "Hey, uh," she glanced up after a moment. "What was up with those people-with-hands in Eridanus again, by the way?"

The wagon won't move on its own.

Azure snorted with amusement, turning back toward the den proper. Somehow, it was hard to be quite so frightened when the babbling dragon had just filled it with so much life, when the heat and light of the day was bright, when Dip was bustling to and fro. "Yeah, you say that, but if it's fuckin' cursed like that other thing was," she responded.

Azure considered, for a moment. She'd intended to put herself between Dip and the door--not that she herself was particularly heroic, but Dip would be likely sleeping deeply, and Azure wanted forewarning of any stray cursed wagon attacks. But fear still lingered, and a childish desire to be nearer to someone for protection stayed with it; she didn't want to be halfway across the room if something did happen.

"...Yeah," she decided, somewhat abruptly, and turned. She spent a moment dragging the soft bedding, and it took a couple trips; then she spent awhile rearranging it, birdlike, shoving it here and there with beak and feet. Once she settled down, she pulled a stray stone over and pressed her beak to it for a moment. She wanted a light to lay between them and the door... just in case.

The rock turned black, and she paused.

She knew this... happened, sometimes. The rock'd turn jet black, sometimes even crack, and she'd had a long day, she was stressed-... But she couldn't help thinking it was... a bad omen, somehow. Like something still lurked, here.

"Great," Azure muttered.

She curled on the soft bedding, glancing back at Dip in thought. "Well, the kid was lost--in the tunnel here, I think I found her in? She's mute. She talks with magic. Seems pretty sweet but way too trusting," she added, "like, she seemed scared of a lot but she was just wandering alone. Completely alone. Anyway, her father's in Eridanus and he had stuff lying around. Stuff that looked carved, or hand-made. I'm-... I didn't really stay long enough, you know how I am about that place... I didn't really stay long enough to see it all. But it looks like stuff you'd be interested in."

She paused, for a moment, thinking, trying to remember Attikias more clearly, so as to describe him with some accuracy. "The--father? He was a little weird. But he had skin like yours, kinda purpley? I think it mighta had a little fur, I don't know. Long hair like yours, too, a little wavy, I think dark. A tail just like yours. Hands like yours, and he was about your size, I think. I think-... the only real difference was, he didn't have horns? But his kid did." She shrugged some, thinking for a moment. "I think how, like... you know how dragons look kinda the same? I think you're whatever he is. Like, the same type of thing. Same species," she amended, remembering the word. "I figured you might wanna meet him; maybe you can make stuff together."