"Yeah, fake stuff," Iceheart echoed. She shoved Undertow in until it seemed about right to her-- which was about the same time that he started thanking her. She was well past her shoulders in water, now. If she lifted herself to her tiptoes, she might just start floating off with the waves. "Like... I dunno. They thought they heard footsteps and stuff, but it was just us two."

A beat. "Like, definitely just us two. I would have noticed if someone else were walking around." Crunching in snow was a noisy affair-- even a little rabbit wasn't entirely silent when it hopped across the plains.

She'd started backing off a little, cementing her feet to more stable ground where it didn't feel like a rogue wave would sweep her off her feet and pull her elsewhere. "I don't think you owe me a fish," she said, toneless but earnest. "I like catching fish and it seems right to do things for other people, I think."

And then, as if from nowhere-- "Are we friends?" The word had been kicking around in the vast, empty noise of her brain. She was vaguely aware that friends were people you wanted to do things for, and though she didn't feel like friends was what she was with Íllska, Undertow seemed more like a friend.

Friends also seemed like something you needed consent for. "It's okay if you don't want to be."

@Undertow

Undertow wasn't used to the surface, yet, so when he tried to spin around to face Iceheart again, he wasn't paying attention to the surf. It washed gently in at the same time that he turned, and he wound up flailing upside-down for a moment before managing to right himself, blinking.

He offered Iceheart a foolish grin. "Oops." He cast his mind back to what she had been saying. "So... magic can... hurt, in different ways. Or do different bad things?" he half-stated, half-asked. It was a thoughtful comment; he was trying to imagine what else it could do. What if one of them made too much ice around their feet and just... got stuck in it, or something? He shuddered at the vague thought.

"Thanks--I think you're right. Someone helped me when I first hatched, too." He went silent, for a beat, lost in memory, before looking up and blinking. The rainbow lights cascading down his flanks shimmered brightly. "I'll still try to get one, though! I'd feel bad if I didn't." He... wasn't sure why he would, but he just felt that way. But--maybe Iceheart knew? She seemed to know stuff. "Do you know why I'd feel bad? It's weird." He'd never felt guilt, before. He'd never had a reason to, but now he felt it.

Maybe it was the magic backfiring on him, still?

"And yes, I think we're friends?" He considered. He wasn't entirely sure on his definitions of some things, yet. And Iceheart was his first real friend. But... "We talked a little and we like each other--um. Do you like me?" he hastened to ask (entirely innocently), worried he'd gone too far. That was what friendship meant, right? Hanging out with those you liked?

"I do want to be," Undertow added. "I'm--I just want to make sure I'm doing it right?"

@Iceheart

"I guess," Iceheart said. She, unlike Undertow, did not think that much about it. It was one of those things that wouldn't occur to her until it actually happened, and her magic hadn't 'bitten' her yet. So much so that she was already snuffling the surface of the water looking for another fish.

Her ears flicked as she went. "I don't know," she answered-- and she genuinely did not. She knew vaguely that she would feel bad, too, but she couldn't tell anyone why. "I can find fish, too. We can eat a lot of fish and then that'll be good, I think." She reached out to her magic again and a thick, pointed shard of ice began to form in the water. She paused only briefly to side-eye Undertow with some uncetainty.

The information that you could do Being Friends wrong was worrying to her.

"I like you," she said. "How do you do being friends right?" She asked, tail lashing with some concern but her voice still lacking tone entirely. Her eyes twisted back to the shard of ice before she lost control of it and used it to spear a fish.

Out the fishing-spear came and she was using her forelegs to pry the silverling off it as she spoke. "I think sharing fish is something friends do, so I think we're both doing it right. Unless--?" Unless there was something more she didn't know? Surely not? She knew everything??

@Undertow

Undertow stared at the fish-spearing in blatant awe. When she had pulled it back, and off the spine, he blinked at her and struggled to catch up again with the conversation. He'd been listening, but her magic had wholly distracted him. He wanted to learn that, too! If only to be more useful, more helpful to his friends. Speaking of which...

"Maybe? Uh, just in case, maybe--we can be a new kind of friends. Like... Land-and-sea friends. Except..." He drifted to and fro in the shallows as the water gently surged and retreated, thinking. "That's kind of a bad name. I need--we need a better one. But I'm glad you like me." There was no guile or sense of polite conduct; he was a kid, and so he stated the truth with gentle joy. He was glad she liked him. Nobody had ever disliked him, as yet, but it was somehow a relief to hear it anyway.

But... she was doing all the work, and that didn't feel like a 'friends' thing. "Hold on," he said, and turned to plunge down into the water again. Surely his magic was done backfiring now; he'd try to pull his weight. As a friend.

He was quick in the water, surprisingly so. Even at a 'slow' sinuous curl he outpaced some fish, and once he'd spotted a school, his dart forward was lightning fast. He shot up alongside it, and the water just around his jaws and limbs went ice cold for an instant; the fish immediately seized, going still in the water, shocked by the cold. A moment later Undertow had it firmly in his jaws, and his head--fish in teeth--breached the water as he snake-swam his way back to Iceheart. He crunched it so it was really dead (they had a tendency, he'd learned, to swim away otherwise) and dropped it carefully at her feet. "Here!" he offered, happy to finally contribute something.

Even if 'something' was just another fish.

@Iceheart

Iceheart plodded forward, wading through the waters until she was more than past her limit-- her feet paddled awkwardly as she half-floated and half-stretched her limbs down to the ground for purchase. She dunked her white head down into the water, squinting, to see where Undertow had gone in there. She could see, but only vaguely: a dark shape that flitted like dark lightening against a darker background, a keen black-blue haze covering everything. Water filled her ears with a dull roar, and soon the dragon was pulling her head out and trying to shake it dry.

It didn't take long for Undertow to reappear with his bundle. "Thanks," she said as she snaked out to where she could more comfortably stand and eat, snapping up the fish and tilting her head back to choke it down. She shook herself dry again, damp wings fluttering.

"I'm glad we're friends, too, even if we're doing it wrong," Iceheart said. It was earnest, too, even if it didn't entirely sound it-- having friends felt right, in some strange way. "Maybe it just matters if we're glad and like each other." Not that she knew. Not that she even had anyone she could ask.

A beat. "Do you know more people?" She asked. "People who know stuff about friends?"

@Undertow

He watched the graceful-looking, soft-furred dragon gulp down the fish whole, staring. It wasn't that Undertow hadn't eaten like that, of course, but--it somehow looked wrong on her. He'd expected delicate picking at it, or something, but after a moment he mentally shrugged it away and accepted that beautiful fur-dragons could in fact choke a fish down whole. And that was okay.

"Maybe," he agreed, fairly cheerful. He hauled himself back onto land, halfway, his heavy little body snake-squiggling into the gravel before flopping awkwardly there. "I don't--I mean, I met someone? But underwater and I don't think they talk?" He started to get worried, but then the obvious question rose in his mind, and distracted him. "Do you?"

He chewed that thought over for a moment.

"If you don't, maybe we can find people? Either someone who knows about friends or--maybe more friends." It was a tentative, uncertain thought, but if one friend was good, more was better--right?

@Iceheart