ORIGIN

It was striding fairly casually through the cave, recovered now, and feeling ready for another round of training. Maybe...one or two more rounds would be good. Yeah, it just needed to work on its abilities some more, its sneaking and stuff. Hopefully that would satisfy the Overseer...er, Master. It still hadn't completely wrapped its head around that.

In its wandering, it almost walked right over the flower. It wasn't really staring at the ground, rather the world around it, but just a little flicker of movement. It froze and immediately flicked its many eyes down, just in time to see...something, a very very small something, just sitting on the ground looking at the flower. It leaned its head down curiously to inspect it. "What...why are you so small? Won't someone step on you?"

The little thing was so tiny that Beta could barely hear its squeaking voice and had to lean in closer just to make out what it was saying. It was saying things like "big!" and "very small" and "sfartis", although Beta had no clue what "sfartis" was. It considered just leaving it to go off and do something productive but...it probably couldn't hurt just to take a little break....right after its previous break.

Beta slumped itself to the ground, already getting a bit of pain in its neck from leaning down to see. "I'm big because I was designed that way. Or, uh, my life-giver was designed that way and he kinda passed it to me. You should see Alpha, though." It snorted. "What is sfartis. Is it some kind of gemstone? What is your designation?"

Beta narrowed its eyes at the little dragon, a little annoyed by its whole...doesn't know words thing. It wasn't a nanny. And it didn't particularly care for the dragon - it wasn't supposed to make friends. Friends were a distraction to training, right? That's what Master Vargas always said. And that's what the Overseer stuck by now.

But when did Beta want to be like Alpha?

Maybe it wanted the same favoritism and respect that Alpha had now, but it certainly didn't want to be it. How it had laughed at Beta when it'd hurt its paw, how it had shoved it to the ground to try and get the bone out, how it had talked about all the targets it had fought like it was proud to have just. Walked up to others and beat them to the ground. But then again, wasn't that what Beta was doing now? Finding targets and hunting them, without their permission? The cat had told it that it could always just ask. Why hadn't that occurred to Beta before?!

No, this was useless thinking. It didn't need to care about this. Because caring about things was using energy that it didn't want to spare. It just wanted to relax, have a good time, and impress Master Vargas. That was it. So if it wanted to chill out with this little, tiny, insignificant dragon in its free time, then it was perfectly obliged to do so.

It had probably seemed strange, just suddenly staring off into the distance as it fell into thought, but jerked out of it quickly, blinking at the little dragon. "More dragons? I met a big white one in Monoceros. Do you know her? She spat ice at me. Designed is like. Created. Formed, I guess. Someone made decisions and created something. And designation is your title. Your, uh, name."

Beta blinked and thought for a moment, raising its head a bit to scratch at the underside of its neck. Maybe the white dragon was from some other dragon group. Damn, that was something to think about, multiple groups of those beasts running (or flying) around the caves. Although if any of them were as small as Lass, they probably weren't a problem to the Sentinels.

"Nah, it was my fault. I was being a bit of a jerk." It snorted again. "Lass, okay. Cute name. My designation is Ruby-Beta. Not as nice as Lass, but its a title, I guess." It put its head back on the ground and stared at her for a second. "You aren't very scary. You're just tiny. And very light."

All six of its eyes blinked in faint surprise at Lass's compliment of their name. They weren't sure what, exactly, was pretty about their name - it was just a designation, a title. "It's not supposed to be pretty. It's supposed to be functional. I am a ruby gembound. And I was second of my hatching, making me "Beta". The first was called Orthoclase-Alpha, the third was called Selenite-Gamma and so-on." It wasn't sure why it was explaining all of this to her, who probably wouldn't understand it, but...whatever, it wasn't like some important secret.

It laughed again, not at Lass specifically, but at her logic. "That's true! But sorry to tell you, but they don't think you're scary, they think you're silly! You are, after all, very small. But be careful who you go around trying to scare, because I know a few creatures that wouldn't care about stepping on you if you annoyed them." They didn't name anyone in particular, but Master Vargas came quickly to mind. After all, to him, if your design was not worthy, then your life was not meaningful.

"Flower egg? Nah. Just out of a regular old ruby. I've never seen giant ruby flowers but they might be out there somewhere."