The little dragon spread dark and leathery wings, exulting in the feeling of warm air billowing up between his slender finger-bones. His heavily-burnt chest scales, where a splatter of the python Septiezal's heat had torched through chest and flank, were scabbing and scarring thickly. His minor wounds were by now mended.

All in all, he felt good, if hungry. Letting the warm wind lift his tiny, lightweight body, he drifted upward, scanning the rocks below with ember-colored eyes. For an hour or more he hovered, sometimes flitting back to his niche to rest his young wings, at other times rising and falling on the warm columns of air. He was still getting the hang of hovering, of balancing, of beating his wings and banking and gliding--but it came naturally to him. His slender body, barely two feet long, lifted higher on the updraft.

There. At last, he spotted movement: a smallish rat scurrying from one patch of vegetation, over a very long stretch of open rocky beach, to another. Inhaling, feeling the heat build in his chest, he folded his wings and swept low, flaring them out just as his jaws opened and the heat surged up from him.

It did little but sputter out, though, a few rings of smoke and a sear of heat that choked his throat for a moment. He caught himself on the wing, flapping upward and hissing, staring down at the escaping rat as it vanished into the rustling ferns.

@Asimona

Asimona was starting to sweat. Fornax was hotter then any of the other caves she had been in. What had drawn her here, she did not know. Perhaps curiosity or her desire to see the world. Either way, she was here now and she could say that this was definitely an experience.

Her body was built for surviving cold weathers, keeping her warm in the harshest environment. But this room was just hot. The warmth sunk into her skin and heated up her blood probably more then it should have been heated. Her skin felt hot and she was, all and all, not very happy.

Out of desperation, she focused her magic on the moisture in the air. She pulled it down towards her own body to try and freeze it over her skin. As the many molecules of water touched her skin, the magic swept over them, freezing them against her. She piled on a few layers until she was covered in chillingly cold armor of ice. As she walked through Fornax to explore, her residual magic kept it cool and stopped it from melting in the heat.

She heard a sound from nearby, the rushing of wing and a faint hissing. She looked up and her heart jolted in her chest. Up there, high above the ground, a dark dragon hovered in the air. For a moment, she simply stared, daring to believe it was true. Its presence tickled at her spine and she felt uneasiness. Was this just another invisible creature? Like the red dragon was? She had to find out.

She opened her wings and, with mild difficulty due to the ice, took off into the air and flew up to the young dragon. "Are you real?" She called out as she rose to its level.

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Dread
notes: notes here

Dread was still wholly focused on where the rat had gone when he heard the soft beating of wings below. His head jerked down, his little body soaring sharply upwards as he frantically beat his own wings to flee the sudden sound. His ember-colored eyes caught sight of a larger, paler creature similar to himself rising to meet him, and he flailed higher, nearly tumbling from the air in his youthful clumsiness.

He was about to turn and flee when the creature spoke--and he hesitated. The massive snake that had attacked him had not made noises--and this thing wasn't pursuing him too terribly far. He hovered at a safe distance, eyeing it, calculating.

There was a strong part of him that feared anything larger than himself--that fled and hid and survived. But there was another part, another part that had grown more and more insistent over the last days. Some instinct in him expected others of his kind: companions, siblings, family. Other little dragons to fight with and to chase, to steal food from and to spar and learn his magic. An instinct that understood that the vast dragons that should have been guarding him from such creatures as the snake... were missing.

It was this instinct that kept him hovering, and it was this instinct that made him call back, but not in words, as he had not yet learned them. Nothing had yet triggered that memory-from-before, the knowledge of speech. Instead he squeaked, loudly, at Asimona--hesitant, but roughly enough to try to sound unafraid.

"SQUEAK?" he asked.

@Asimona

Asimona stared at the other dragon with surprise. Did he not know how to speak? If he could not speak then he had to be real, right? All of her visions were creatures that spoke words (or screamed loudly) that were directed towards her. So if this one couldn't speak then perhaps she could assume that this dragon was real, for now.

She paused for a moment, wondering how she was going to approach this situation. She had never met another gembound that couldn't speak before. She didn't really know how to communicate with someone that couldn't communicate back, but there was no harm in trying.

She drifted a little bit closer to the dragon, slowly, trying not to be threatening. "Hello, dragon." She kept her voice slow and gentle. "I am Asimona." She wondered if the dragon would understand her. She didn't mind if it didn't speak back, but if she could get it to at least understand what she was saying, then maybe they would be able to go somewhere.

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Dread
notes: here

Dread peered, clumsily holding his place in the air with rapidly-bobbing wingstrokes. The silver creature's voice was kind--soothing, even--and stoked some of his courage back up. Her words, though--he didn't understand her words.

Not entirely.

He squeaked, instead, peering at her, some instinct in him triggered to mimic. He squeaked, and screeched, repeating her name back more loudly--and mangled in with the other words she had spoken.

"ASIMAMLLO," he tried, and did a brief spin, flitting away in the air to gain a few more feet of distance. He wasn't sure what the vocalizations meant, but some part of his mind deemed them important and so he stopped, fascinated by this stranger, and peered at her while hovering once more.

"AM AM AM!"

@Asimona

Asimona giggled at the dragon's attempt to try and speak. She knew that trying to communicate would be difficult, but she was willing to try. She felt a sort of instinct that drew her towards this young dragon. Another creature of her species (or, at least, something similar) was not something she found often in the caves. Sure, there were a lot of different creatures, but she hadn't really met any dragons.

"Ah-su-mo-na." She said each syllable carefully and firmly, pointing to herself with a claw to let it know that this was the sound that would refer to her. Her name.

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Dread
notes: here

For the little dragon to fly closer to the far larger was... perilous, to say the least. But as Asimona spoke, he did so anyway, peering.

She was making a noise.

She was pointing to herself.

Dread tilted his little head, the spines along his head and neck raising and lowering slightly as he considered.

Ah-su-mo-na... Ah-su-mo-na..? He shook his little head and neck. It was clear now that she wasn't about to attack him, or so he hoped--and the sense of sameness between them, the sense of family, of rightness, further bolstered his courage.

"ASMNA!" he cried, excited, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking himself mid-air. His childish elation filled him, welling up in the form of magicka.

He coughed up the tiniest of flames, but it didn't even extend out of his mouth, and instead a few black rings of smoke poured away. He flapped back, and swept down and around, as if inviting Asimona to give chase.

To play.

Then he swept back up, flapping up to peer at her.

@Asimona

Asimona smiled kindly at his attempt to say her name. It was a good start for his first time and she felt the first strands of communication take hold. And as the dragon began to flap around playfully, letting some rings of smoke out of his mouth, she watched after him, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

She remembered her first moments, playing in the snow. The fun, the excitement that had gripped her, the want and need to play and have a companion. Yes, perhaps that was what the dragon needed right now.

But he was also tempting her to get involved purely for the fun of it. Her tail wiggled with excitement and she felt a sudden burst of energy from her excitement. She decided to try and throw in one more word before joining his game. "Play. You want to play!" She laughed loudly and opened her mouth, letting out a strong surge of icy breath into the sky before giving her wings a few strong flaps to throw herself forward, giving chase to the young dragon.

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Dread
notes: here

Dread had, in his long few first days, been entirely alone. He'd felt it, keenly, after the first two. The great, vast emptiness of the caves had left him first learning flight without a comrade, and then trying to invent his own games, or provoke his meals into play--but they feared him too deeply, and rightly so. He had spent hours tossing rocks about and chasing them, some deep loneliness eventually driving him to lie back in his den--his niche in the stone cave wall--gripped with a strange melancholy that he did not understand.

Here, at last, he had a friend--an ally, so it seemed, a creature like himself.

It was, in a sense, like finding family.

Hesitantly overjoyed, both afraid of the larger creature and excitedly hopeful, Dread swept away on the warm wind. Asimona was breathing magic, too, but it wasn't like his--wasn't hot; hers was cold, her breathe a frosty plume of ice, whereas his was shimmering heat and smoke. He noticed other differences, too--her scales were pale, and hard, like the ice in the tunnel that led from this place. And his--his were dark, leathery coal-black and red.

Were they the same?

Dread winged away, squeaking excitedly, repeating back after a moment the words that Asimona had said, though garbled beyond much recognition and clearly just a cheerful child's babbling.

"PLLLAYYY! YOU TO WANPLAYYY!"

The formation of the sounds was foreign on his mouth and tongue, but as natural to him, somehow, as flying. But he didn't focus on it overmuch, not yet--for now, his playful game of chase with the larger predator had him in its happy grips.

With a happy squeak he wheeled to face her, aiming to let a much milder blast of pure heat--not flame, but just warmth--plume outward in a playful "warning." It was small--barely visible as a ghostly ripple in the air, and nothing more--and a strange counterpoint to Asimona's frost.

But he turned, and rose high, climbing higher on Fornax's updrafts, spiralling high into the air in the hopes that Asimona would follow.

@Asimona

As Aimons chased after him, she felt a wave of heat cross over her body and the ice she had covering her body began to melt. She paused for a moment to shake off the water droplets and laughed loudly. Of course, it was inevitable that the ice would melt soon, with the heat of fornax and the younger dragon's heat.

"Ah," she cried in mock distress, "That's hot!" She spun towards him with a playful gleam in her eyes and flew after him, following his spiraling patterns. She had never played with a dragon before. Heck, she hadn't played with anyone since her hatching day in the snow. This was relieving, rejuvenating, and it made her realize that she had needed this. A companion that was like her. Even if they couldn't communicate yet, there was a connection, forged by their shared species. She could feel it as much as the heat.

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Dread
notes: here