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.

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.

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.

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.

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.