According to his observations, the music sounds better when he plays near water. Something about the background lull of water over stone lends a certain cadence to the notes; something about the sound lends weight to the tones.

Or perhaps he's perceiving a subjective thing as fact. Who can tell for certain?

His tail dips slightly into the waves as he walks, searching for a spot near the softly winding river to settle. One hand is moved off of the guitar to push aside a few rocks; with a sweep of his leg, he knocks a few twigs aside and sits, tail curling around him as he settles beside the water.

Then he plays.

Softly, at first, claws teasing out the notes. Trying to find the shape of the song he wants to play. His mind begins to wander as the notes resolve into half-formed chords, one hand shifting positions on the neck of the guitar; lingering, softly, on the landscape of Canis.

So many bones. So much death, that once belonged to many, many lives, lives snuffed in such a capacity that those left behind used the remains of those who had fallen before them as walls and shelters... death that had faded into simple ivory. Ossein and marrow, bound to lay upon the stone for eternity, until it, too, crumbled to dust.

The remains of a war, a story that will never be told.

Slowly, the chords resolve into a song. Something slow, solemn, and sad; a funeral song, for lives which he had never known, and never will know, for the creatures that inhabited them are long-dead.

Miasma

A few notes float down the river, towards where the length of a naga is stretched out, drifting, partially submerged in the shallow water.

Slowly, then all at once, she lifts her head, angling herself toward that strange sound.

She has never heard a sound like that; awkward and slightly discordant, flat notes landing as often as pure tones, but one that still sings with a strange harmony. A strange... melancholy, even.

It makes her... feel something. Something soft as a sigh; something that makes her want to curl up comfortably within an underwater crevice and just listen.

As she attributes to all unexplained things, she thinks it is magic.

Magic sound. Magic song.

It is... strangely beautiful.

Slowly, she floats up the river towards its source, tendrils of smoke beginning to drift and catch at the edge of the pangolin's tail.

Speaking.
Thinking.

Oh, a gembound has come to listen.

The mask lifts ever-so-slightly from where it looks down at the strings of the guitar, up to the, ah... serpent that has floated his direction.

He does not think he has seen a creature such as this one before. Some manner of water creature, from how it floats half-submerged in the water. Its stone is like his, he notes; covering its face, glinting vaguely in the light. Other than that, he cannot pick out many details—the strange fog that surrounds its body obscures it from examination.

Still, a listener is a listener, and he does not mind an audience of any shape of size.

He gives the slightest nod of acknowledgement—unaware for now of the creature's blindness—and looks back down at the guitar, focusing more on soft, mourning notes than upon the other gembound.