ORIGIN

Azure had moved around, a little. She'd lived in Orion for a time, and then a fucking dragon had razed it, and so she and Dip had moved to Monoceros.

Where more dragons lived. It would've been nice to say that those dragons were more friendly, but one had knocked Azure into her chrysalis in a rage, so maybe not. But they'd lived there peacefully otherwise. Dip was her adopted sister, and a wonderful person, an excellent smith--someone Azure looked up to and loved, despite having half-raised her herself. Dip had made a nice little forge there in a small cave of sorts, a den, and had learned from others--and through trial and error--how to form and repair weapons and armor. But Monoceros was a dead end cave, without much trade for... well, anything, really.

Eventually, they'd returned to Orion, where the trading had more potential--travelling back and forth between the two caves. Though the ruins here were blackened and often crumbled by Raheerah's dragonfire, they'd gone through the painstaking process of repairing and decorating another home. Baubled lights were strung up through this ruined building on the outskirts of the ruins; tanned leather and woven cloth rugs and blankets lay here and there as beds and coverings. Splashes of dye--some illuminated as though with carpets of glowing stars--streaked the walls, testament to Azure's practice in her artistic endeavors. And the signs of craftsmanship were everywhere. Though the building itself was made of ancient, crumbled stone, and though the scent of flowers brought in still mingled with charred rock, there were little signs of life everywhere. Translucent gemstones had been formed, perfectly smooth and polished, around magically-preserved flowers and bits of fern; many emitted a soft glow, and others still were hung on cords. Bits of scrap metal and leather, grindstone and coal, lay at one end of the house: Dip's end, where she worked when they were in Orion.

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Azure flew, Dewberry coiled around one antler, as low, slow and smoothly as she could. She didn't want to scare her other sort-of-adopted-sister, and she listened closely for any call to stop, or land, in case Dewberry became scared.

Eventually she came to a clattering halt just outside her Orion home, the soft glow inside a welcome one, and here she paused. "If Dip's awake--she's really nice, and you'll like her. But she might be asleep, or out. We'll get you settled, though, and if you want, I can help you look for something to eat? I've some water in there, too, in a bowl."

She paced for the doorway--a large woven mat of grass hung from it, like a door, and this she nudged aside with her pointed beak. "But tell me what you think of it! You can stay as long as you want." She'd reiterated this several times, but there it was again; she felt for Dewberry, she hoped that her sister was as kind as she seemed, and... that she could help her make things right, in her life.

Caves knew how alone she'd felt, after the Bloodberries mess.

The sound of stone striking metal long announced Serendipity before anyone even had to look at her.

With Azure out and Shiloh dropped off at Attikias's for a while, Dip had the time to sink herself straight into her work. There was peace in it for her. As much as she liked the company of her family she liked her own company, too, and the quiet to work and mumble to herself the entire process, too.

Her fingers were lit and smouldering, pressing into the metal of a blade until it was unbearable even for Dip's calloused hand, until the iron shimmered with heat and turned red and glowing. Malleable with the heat, she took the stone hammer and beat the metal into shape against the makeshift, gemstone anvil.

It was a very meticulous process, if largely a pain in the ass (but what hobby wasn't, sometimes?) to constantly re-heat and strike and re-heat and strike, but to also make sure the metal didn't get too hot or it would be brittle and shitty. Over time, though, it became ritual.

Serendipity's hands were still smoking when she heard the clicking of Azure's hooves, craning her neck around to the door. When her beak appeared, the blade was put down and the humanoid was stretching for her shirt to pull it on over her horns, in some distant instinct of decency.

"Hey, sis," she called during this process, finangling a strap getting caught between horns. "I was thinking about how to decorate swords to make them look pretty? What do you think of making a bunch of--oh shit you've got something on your face."

Well, antler, but same area. Roughly.

Dip wandered over, shaking the heat and the steam from her hands. She didn't get very far before realising the something was actually a someone, and she stopped before a giant thing-with-hands grabbed some poor fucker and tossed them off her sister's face. Antlers. Whatever.

"Oh, shit," the humanoid repeated. She was still shaking her hands out, though they were quickly cooling down. "What's up? I'm Serendipity. Or Dip."

Azure gave a soft snort at Dip's swears and Dewberry's whispered question, and spoke aloud. They'd already introduced themselves, but she was gonna be polite anyway.

"Dip, Dewberry; Dewberry, Dip. Dip's my sister, the one I mentioned--Dip, Dewberry's one of my... old family. She wasn't--like them, I don't think, not--around long enough, you know? I guess she's kinda lost so. I figured she could come stay here, awhile, if that's okay? -Dip's not always on fire but that's how she makes the armor and stuff! She makes the metal super hot, then beats it into shape." Azure said this with enthusiasm, clearly admiring Dip's methods and ingenuity.

She moved forward, picking a stone ledge near enough to the heat and leaning down, offering the place to Dewberry for the moment. It was only a foot or so high, so she gauged it easy enough for the snake to get down safely, should she wish it. "You can hunt alone if you want to. Um--what do you eat, exactly? I don't think I ever asked," she added. "We get red mice around, sometimes, wanting to take my stuff, for some reason, but-... They might be a little big?" She was pretty sure that even the mice were oversized for the snake, so what did Dewberry eat?

...Bugs, maybe? She wasn't sure, but shrugged a little and blinked to Dip. "Everything going okay, here?" She guessed Shiloh was with Attikias, and as for the smithing, Dip seemed to have busied herself pretty well. She wasn't sure where the wagon was. Azure picked the corded pouch from around her neck until it opened, and spilled its few contents onto a nearby mat she kept for her own use in mixing dyes and the like.

The line between old family and new family seemed a little blurry to Serendipity at this point, but that wasn't really her shit to figure out. Something about it did bother her, though-- maybe the -berry name or the lingering horror of Blackberry and her murder dumplings, or whatever. She glanced between Azure and Dewberry as her sister went for the ledge.

Not her shit to figure out.

"Sure," Dip said, one ear flicking, and then her tail flicking out behind her as she padded along. "How do you like to sleep? We can get you some blankets and stuff or whatever you're most comfortable with."

For a moment she was studying the ledge and Dewberry herself, though she chattered away at the same time. "Oh, yeah, it's great. I mean, it's loud and it stinks to fuck but it's a lot of fun. Uhh, I don't do it while people are around and sleeping and stuff." ... obviously.

Fuck, Shiloh was enough to deal with while people were sleeping. Dip was, at least, fairly certain that Dewberry was generally too small for Shiloh to bother too much. Maybe. At least not directly. Maybe.

Her head lifted to Azure's question. "Yeah, it's quiet," she said. "Shy's in Eridanus with Attik and his kids for a bit."

Dip went stepping back before Dewberry felt too crowded by giant gembound, rummaging around her side of the house. "We could cut something up if you like meat, or fish, maybe?" She offered towards the snake, yanking out a piece of old cloth.

She sniffed it, sneezed into her elbow, and then started shaking the dust out of it. "Unless you don't wanna eat lessers, I mean. We can get you some berries or something."

Azure thought about it; Orion wasn't big on water but Eridanus wasn't too far away. And bugs--this cave, she thought, shoudl have bugs, at least. Worms. "Well, if you want to look around for worms outside? There's some grass and dirt and stuff here so maybe. Otherwise I'd be happy to fly you to Eridanus. It isn't far and I think there's fish and frogs and stuff in the water there?" Probably. She'd never really paid attention to that sort of thing, truth be told. Ah, but Dip was offering fish; possibly she had some, somewhere, and could cut a piece away.

"Do you think I could learn how to make the colors on the wall? Or those glowing plants?" Azure glanced back over the splashes of tested dye that now decorated the stone. There was a smile in her tone, though not on her rigid beak, of course, as she looked bright-eyed back to Dewberry and answered. "Yeah! I'd be happy to teach you everything I can, you know? That stuff--the colors? That's dye. I take stuff and crush it up and mix it, usually with some water. And paint it on stuff, or even on Gembound! And there's magic you can use to make it stay forever. I painted a dragon black, once, with glowing stars!" (Not that she entirely knew what 'stars' were, but between secondhand reports, Orion's ceiling and the Three Kings, she has some inkling.) "I could even paint you, if you wanted me to!"

She was excited, by all of this, feathers ruffling out a little: she could teach someone all this stuff! Nobody'd ever been really interested in learning it, before. And it was a new friend, new family, in a sense. It was a rush Azure wasn't very familiar with, but a good one.

Azure left Dip to answer about Shy, about Attikias; she wasn't aware of the snake's confusion between other family and Bloodberries just yet. She had an itch, instead, and twisted her head back around to briefly scratch at it with one hind hoof, then looked cheerfully back at Dip. Her sister was, to her happy relief, quite accepting of the snake--even already preparing a bed, offering her food. Azure paced over to offer Dip a brief lay of her feathered neck--a sort of bird-hug, without the forelimbs.

As for "a hollow beneath a rock," Azure brightened up even further. "I could make you a bed, I think," she offered, blue eyes widening at the thought. She turned, pacing over to a clear spot of rocky ground, and leaned down to touch beak to stone. Here she focused, thinking deeply.

After a moment a gemstone began to form, sprouting up from the rock and taking smooth shape. It looked something like a small cat bed, formed out of a cream-streaked red jasper that matched some of Dewberry's colors--a deliberate choice, no doubt. And it was entirely self-contained, with a hole at the front into which the little snake could slither. As an afterthought, Azure formed a sort of loop of stone at the top of the thing: a crude handle by which she, or Dip, could easily carry the rocky little cave. "There!" she exclaimed, breathy with excitement, eyeing her work over. She looked to Dip. "Would the, um--cloth fit in there?" she asked, head tilting.