The smile refuses to leave Snapdragon's face as she soars above the twisting, carved floors of Monoceros, soaring along a swirling current running around the cave, her feathers warmed by the hot draft as she surveys all that lies below.

She's heard of the cave of winds, of its swirling, perpetual windstorm, but never until now has she gotten the chance to experience its swirling winds for herself.

And she loves it.

Some part of her feels like this is what she was built for; broad, strong wings like her father's catching the strong winds with ease, keeping her weight aloft as she leaves the ground behind and soars along the zephyr currents. The wind is so strong here that she doesn't even need to flap. She can just stay up here until her wings get tired, suspended in an infinite glide.

But where would be the fun in that?

She eyes the center of the room for a few moments, taking her best guess on how far the twister is from her, how close she can get. As much of a risk-taker as she is, she's not suicidal; she'd never hear the end of it from Nemo if she got herself hurt out here.

But if she got just a little bit closer, where the winds are stronger…

A grin curves her muzzle and then she's angling her wings into a dive, flying deeper into the currents.

A jetstream catches her at once and she's sent off-balance, tumbling through the air with an instinctive shriek before she rights herself, flapping hard—the wind under her wings is harsh, fast, and it's all she can do to keep up. She angles one wing higher than the other and finds herself swirling, staring towards the heart of the twister. Snapdragon's still more than a good distance away from the monstrous storm but just knowing it's there sends a rush of heady adrenaline through her veins, cheering her.

The jetstream fades from under her as quickly as it came, leaving her feeling strangely heavy, absent of the force which had buoyed her; she sighs and drifts back into the hot band of air she was gliding in before, heart still racing in her chest a little from the thrill.

Maybe it isn't the most dangerous thing she could have done, the most daring, but… some day. Some day she'll be ready for that kind of thing.

For now she just lets herself circle the sky and stare into the twister, contemplating if she should take another dive closer to the swirling winds.

@Blitz

Blitz was doing some training of his own: likewise not within the center of the deadly twister but on its outskirts, on the far side of the little storm from Snapdragon. Deeply focused, alone as he always was, he dove and bobbed back free of the tearing winds (with effort); wavering to and fro he regained his skyborne balance.

Had he not an eagle's eyes, he might not have spotted, through the dust that the Twister kicked up, the strange form across from him. It was-... Pink-? No, white, with pink, he decided--and gray. It was a testament to the bizarre shape of Snapdragon's body that it took Blitz a moment to register her form in addition to merely her color. She was birdlike, but... not, with tufts of-... Fur?

The eagle squinted through the dust, trying to see, but--I can't make out anything through these winds. The twister was dirtying up Monoceros as it always was.

Well, he'd just--skirt around, then, and go and meet this stranger; see what they were doing. It wasn't that Blitz was a particularly impulsive sort, nor was he nosy or bossy; he wasn't about to flap over and demand to know why Snapdragon was there or what they were doing. But a businesslike introduction couldn't go amiss, certainly? They were both clearly there training--or playing, perhaps, in her case? He couldn't tell. Not from here, at least; and so he beat his wings and angled for the edges of the storm, to skirt around as closely as he safely could.

A stray blast of wind caught him--he cursed inwardly; it was never good to underestimate the storm, no matter how much he had trained in it. He tried to call on his own magic to blast him back again but nothing took, and instead of flying gracefully to the stranger, Blitz was flung by the cyclone in an upside-down arc past Snapdragon.

He caught himself, at least, before he fell: a frantic flapping of wings that took him nearly to the ground, before he soared upward again, feathers ruffled and eyes black with fearful dilation.

Blitz looked at Snapdragon, suddenly quite close, and cleared his throat, trying not to feel too foolish.

"Ahem," he tried; "Sorry for the--ah," he glanced at the storm. How did he phrase it? "My being thrown past you like a wingless idiot?" Eyes tracked back to Snapdragon. "...ungraceful entrance... I wanted to introduce myself."

A beat of silence, and he thought, Ah, yes, I should probably do that, too.

"Blitz," he offered hastily, and cleared his throat again.

This was not quite the "professional" introduction he had had in mind.

stars: ESO/UltraVISTA team. Acknowledgement: TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU; Mike's Birds on Flickr credit for part of "Black and white hawk eagle"

@Snapdragon

One moment, Snapdragon's drifting in the storm, enjoying the toss of warm winds beneath her wings.

The next, something smaller than her and rather black-and-white colored, feathery like she kind of is, goes plummeting through the storm past her.

She makes a rather undignified noise in the back of her throat as she registers that—a) that's a bird, b) oh caves he's falling very fast—and dives, not quite sure what she can do to catch the flailing bird without hurting him with talons or losing her own balance in the storm.

Luckily, it doesn't take very long for him to level himself out, and she finds herself quite grateful that she didn't have to make a mad grab for the poor guy before he hit the ground.

"You good?" she asks him as he takes position at her wing, giving him an awkward grin. "Nice catch."

She'd have hated to see him splatter all over the stone floor.

As it turns out, he's fine besides a couple of ruffled feathers. Her awkward smile turns a little more genuine as he introduces himself, and if she weren't currently using her wing-arms to fly she'd shake his hand. Wing? Talon? Ah, forget about it…

"Snapdragon. Nice to meetcha," she says, eying him curiously. It's not every day she sees someone else taking their chances with the storm. "Y'come here often?"

@Blitz

A compliment, a question, and he was back on (relatively) familiar footing. Well-... wing-ing, anyway.

"Quite, thank you," he answered, half on polite autopilot; "And--thank you," he repeated, at the following compliment.

For a moment, he was distracted by her shape--nothing unseemly, Blitz wasn't that sort at all. But she was unusual, to say the least. The color, seen only at a distance, was the least of it: she was some strange mix of... of bird and something else. And the hybridization seemed to have meandered along her body, picking shapes for her body parts entirely at random. Her feet, for example, were birdlike; but her legs were anything but. Her feathers were obviously avian, but her colors-? Well, Blitz conceded to himself, I suppose I have seen many colors on other birds. He was wondering what, exactly, Snapdragon was when she spoke again, and his flight of a few seconds' worth of fancy was quite interrupted, and forgotten.

"Snapdragon," he repeated, as if to commit her name to memory--an acknowledgment, with a sharp nod of his head. He circled, craning his head to keep polite eye contact, his gaze intent. "Ahh-I do, I train... or I try to. For battles," he explained. That, in the beginning, had been his self-appointed task, but... "Admittedly I have yet to win a war." The last had seen him slam-dunked into the rocky floor of Polaris so hard that he'd been unconscious by the time the chrysalis took him an instant later.

Realizing, abruptly, how this sounded, Blitz hastened to correct his statement a bit. "That is--against dangerous creatures. It-" He hesitated, and decided against asking if Snapdragon had heard of the battle in Polaris; it seemed a self-centered question, really. He once again cleared his throat, and dipped his head. "Nothing sinister, I mean. It--is good to meet you, too; I wanted to ask if you lived here, and--well, introduce myself," he finished.

He was on familiar ground when flying, fighting; but conversation, he was suddenly finding--well, he was a little rusty.

stars: ESO/UltraVISTA team. Acknowledgement: TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU; Mike's Birds on Flickr credit for part of "Black and white hawk eagle"

@Snapdragon

Hm. Whoever this bird is… he's kind of awkward. He keeps tripping over his own sentences, with faltering words and awkward clarifications… but she kinda likes that. Makes him feel more genuine. Like he doesn't have anything to hide, because who would intentionally fuck up in a conversation like that?

Also, she's pretty sure he's older than her, so it would be kinda shitty to think bad of him like that. Respect your elders and all.

She eyes him with a curious cock of the head. "Battles? You been in fights before?"

She's not judgemental. If anything, that sounds… pretty cool, actually. She'd love to actually do something meaningful with her life, now that she's pretty much full-grown by now. Hanging around with her dad, her sibling, and the rest of the Bonebound… well, it's nice and all, but she's itching for something more. More than even testing her mettle against the winds of Monoceros.

Plus, she'd get to help other Gembound, fighting like that. What's not to like?

"Live here?" Snapdragon gives him a smile. "Oh, man, I wish. Would be fun hanging 'round with a twister in your backyard. No, uh—I'm with the Bonebound, up in Canis. My dad's a part of 'em, too."

Admittedly, she's not much for the whole… bone vibe the group's got going on. She doesn't mind it, per se, it's nice that she grew up with such a healthy appreciation for death, and the thought that one will have power and presence even after they've long since passed from the caves is… well, it's comforting. She knows that wherever she's going in life, and at the end of it, it won't be wasted.

Still, it's not quite her thing. Maybe that's why she's found herself venturing out from the cave of bones more and more, now that she's an adult.

She bobs her head at him in an approving nod. "It's nice to meetcha too." Always nice to meet someone who isn't family. She loves the Bonebound, but it's nice to expand her horizons. After all, she knows the world isn't just limited to Canis. It's nice to have a touchstone in other places, too.

@Blitz

She was asking about his fights, and he found himself suddenly a little flustered. (Who indeed would intentionally be so awkward? Certainly not him!) He wasn't the bragging type; he wasn't at all the sort to enjoy talking about himself. "Yes, but I wasn't alone, of course," he hastened to say. "And only one very big battle, really. There were dozens of us there--dragons and monsters I've never seen. I'm--not sure what happened," he admitted. And this conversation was rather awkward indeed; he was circling as he spoke, his body unable to really hover without a strong wind to keep him in place. His little eagle gaze kept jerking his head around, this way and that, to maintain some semblance of polite eye-contact. "I know there was a great deal of fire, a lot of yelling, frost, smoke--and I was flying in to attack, and... something hit me. Possibly my own magic," he admitted, a little embarrassed. "So sadly I can't tell you how it ended, only that I know we did succeed. Or, rather--the rest did." It wasn't self-pitying, but rather it was modesty; he didn't want to take credit where it most certainly wasn't due.

He considered the idea of Canis with interest, after a glance and a slight huff of amusement at the mentioned backyard twister. "Canis-... I have heard of it, but never been there." No, most of his life had been spent around Monoceros, Orion, and Polaris--right around the core, really. "That is the cave they say is--full of bones..?" He studied Snapdragon afresh, a little worried--he'd never understood fully if Canis was home to some sort of death-bone-cult, or what. Was she dangerous-? He certainly hoped not!

"May I ask what it's like? And what--who?--the Bonebound are?" he asked, trying to maintain that polite conversational thread.

stars: ESO/UltraVISTA team. Acknowledgement: TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU; Mike's Birds on Flickr credit for part of "Black and white hawk eagle"

@Snapdragon

Snapdragon doesn't notice the awkwardness of their arrangement in the sky, much. It's a little jarring having a conversation mid-flight with a tornado as their backdrop, yeah—but she's too enraptured by Blitz's mention of some battle to really care much.

The mention of a battle at all sparks her curiosity. A fight? A grand fight, among creatures, monsters and dragons? She wonders why she's never heard of it before. Maybe it was just before her time. She's only four cycles, after all, and this bird speaks with an expertise and a maturity that speaks to far longer than that. She finds herself watching the cant of his wings as he circles above her, examining his form; shame she probably can't pick up many tips from observation alone. Their bodies are simply so different.

She wonders if there's anything else like her in the caves, or if she's unique in what she is. A strange hybrid without compare. There's no resentment nor loneliness in the thought—she'd grown up among the Bonebound, and that left one without any shortage of family—just simple, idle instinct. Even Niveus was far different from her (even as they shared some birdlike traits from their lammergeier father), insectoid where she was mammalian.

His questions bring her out of idle thought. She can't help the half-smile that curves her expression that the trepidation in his tone, at the word 'full of bones'; logically, she'd always known the cave the Bonebound chose to live in was a little 'creepy', but she'd never seen it herself. That's what growing up there did to you, she guesses.

Also, the fact that she could probably eat any one of those bones for breakfast helped. It's hard to get others' fear of mortal remains when all she sees is the same thing she's swallowed down as a snack a hundred times. (Although she'd never snack on the old bones in Canis—she's better than that! Fresh-caught only, dug from recent remains.)

What it's like…? Here she gives a bit of a shrug (wobbling a little in the sky before she regains her balance). "I mean… normal? For me, at least. Kinda hard to describe it when I haven't grown up anywhere else, y'know? But, uh… I'll give it a shot."

She takes a long moment collecting her thoughts before she speaks again. "The Bonebound are… well, we're family. Nothin' big and grand or fancy and organized like y'might think… we're just here to live our lives. 'n care for the bones, I guess, though I've never really been involved in the more…" She gestures vaguely with a hand—as best she can while still using that arm for flight. "...eh, spooky stuff. We respect the bones, n' the bones respect us and help us out occasionally. Aunt Giggle's a seer, she can like, speak to the bones and read your fortune. Does it for everyone in the family."

It's a bit of a ramble, but that's only because she's having a hard time really… explaining the Bonebound besides 'family'. They're quiet. They live with the bones, and taught her to do the same. Nothing special.

They're just home. That's all; and yet, it's a concept so dear to her core that she has a hard time putting it into words.

@Blitz

The bird let out a little snort, a good-natured kind of laugh of relief, though faint. "I admit," he called over the winds, "that's not as sinister as it sounds! What do you mean by--read the bones? Do bones talk?" he asked, and it was a genuine question. Maybe certain bones spoke? Or those in Canis? Or maybe only the Bonebound could hear them-? The caves were full of magical, wonderful things, and very weird things as well, so talking bones didn't seem that far out there.

Just... creepy, that's all.

Blitz grew irritated with the circling, at last, and fought for a moment with his magic. A powerful gust of wind began to blow beneath him--well, not powerful by a larger creature's standards. But for him, it was enough to keep him aloft without circling: minor adjustments of his wing and tail now allowed him to hover, while he spoke, a little in front of Snapdragon. He made sure to keep the wind from knocking this new acquaintance from the sky, however.

Another question occurred to him, then. "Is Canis--safe? Usually, that is--is it safe to visit?" Another laugh, short and apologetic, as Blitz realized his barrage of questions. "I apologize, I'm not trying to knock you out of the air with questions. Say, if you live in Canis, what was it you were doing?" he asked, glancing back at the Twister as if to point to it. It wasn't another barrage, it was half an invitation; maybe if he were there training, and Snapdragon had been there for something else, they could... combine forces, somehow. Help each other. But he had to make sure he wasn't imposing, first.

stars: ESO/UltraVISTA team. Acknowledgement: TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU; Mike's Birds on Flickr credit for part of "Black and white hawk eagle"

@Snapdragon

Do bones talk?

"Of course they talk!" Snapdragon replies, as if it wasn't obvious. "Although… not everyone can hear 'em. Aunt Giggle's the best at it, of course, she's been listening to the bones as long as the Bonebound's been around. And that's a long, long time. I was never any good at it myself though. Just didn't have the patience to sit and listen. Bones don't really speak like we do, y'know."

Is Canis safe? Well—as safe as any other cave, so pretty safe. There's always the occasional creature that'll come scuttling around and if you flip a rock or something too fast you might get sprayed by a spitter spider, but other than that—Snapdragon thinks there's no safer place for a child to grow up.

Of course, having the caves' largest family around to help look after her helps. "Yeah, you should come visit! It's all just atmosphere. Nothin' harmful about the bones, and the Bonebound won't let anyone else in their turf come to harm. Aunt Giggle does bone readings for anyone who wants, y'know. She can tell your fortune. Y'should go ask if you're curious about your future."

She thinks having their future read is something everybody in the caves should do. Some of Giggle's fortunes could be a little foreboding, of course, because the bones were honest and that meant they never lied even about the harshest of truths… but it was comforting, knowing something of the path ahead. It was like a rope stretching out ahead for her to follow.

At the bird's inquiry about what she's doing here among the windstorm, she gives a little shrug. It's not like she can't go places even living in Canis, of course, but she's long since figured out that other Gembound weren't always as nomadic as her. She liked exploring; liked flying around to see the caves. It was fascinating, seeing how different each cave was from each other.

But that's neither here nor there. "Practicing," she replies, nodding her head at the twister. "Felt the winds up here and thought they could be perfect for a lil' test of my skill, y'know?"

Not like that meant much; she hasn't been practicing her flight nearly as often as she'd like. Sure, she uses her wings—all the damn time, actually—but there's a difference between gliding and flapping through the caves and actually pushing herself. There's no growth if you don't test your limits.

She turns to give him a grin, only to realize that he's pulled ahead of her. When did that happen? Wait—she feels something. A shift in the currents, something she missed with all the other jetstreams winding and crashing their way around the cave of winds. Was that… wind magic?

He's got magic like me! came the obvious assumption. And with that came an urge to show off; to show the bird that, hey, she can do that too! She can use the winds to bolster her flight.

C'mere, wind. Help me? A mental call to the air around her, because, hey, if bones could talk, what's to say wind couldn't, too?

A familiar current surges beneath her wings in response, and she pulls forward—not a lot, just enough to be side-by-side with Blitz. She turns her head to him, giving him a grin.

"Plus, it's fun."

@Blitz

"That sounds fascinating," Blitz admitted. He was trying to figure out how he could politely ask for an invitation, for Snapdragon to show him the way to this fortune-teller or even to some talking bones, when the wind shifted.

He thought he recognized magic in it, and went from carefully hovering and facing Snapdragon to watching her shoot up beside him. "Ahh!" he said, his eyes widening in recognition. "I was going to ask if you might like to train together. To dare the storms, at least its edges--or to race? Or--that was magic, yes? To use magic?" he suggested. He was a little more excited, now. He'd never met anyone he could test the skies with.

He hoped she wouldn't turn this down: it might be useful. Even... fun.

stars: ESO/UltraVISTA team. Acknowledgement: TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU; Mike's Birds on Flickr credit for part of "Black and white hawk eagle"

@Snapdragon